


By Prudence Ruled

by ehmazing



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Bodyguard Romance, F/M, Future Fic, Post-War, Royalty, Slow Burn, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-10-04 05:11:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10269011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ehmazing/pseuds/ehmazing
Summary: As per tradition, the soon-to-be Queen of Altea appoints a ceremonial guard to accompany her during the coronation. But spending six months at Allura's side may prove more difficult for Shiro than keeping her alive.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meredyd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meredyd/gifts).



> What do you get when you watch the hit 1992 Whitney Houston movie _The Bodyguard_ in between marathoning _The Crown_ and then go really overboard re: worldbuilding depth? Apparently this.
> 
> (Thank you, Mer, for letting me send you 800 fragments of Restrained Pining and office smut.)

_Hail, Virgin Queen! o'er many an envious bar_  
_Triumphant, snatched from many a treacherous wile!_  
_All hail, sage Lady, whom a grateful Isle_  
_Hath blest, respiring from that dismal war_  
_Stilled by thy voice! But quickly from afar_  
_Defiance breathes with more malignant aim;_  
_And alien storms with home-bred ferments claim_  
_Portentous fellowship. Her silver car,_  
_By sleepless prudence ruled, glides slowly on;_  
_Unhurt by violence, from menaced taint_  
_Emerging pure, and seemingly more bright:_  
_Ah! wherefore yields it to a foul constraint_  
_Black as the clouds its beams dispersed, while shone,  
By men and angels blest, the glorious light?_

—William Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Sonnet 38: “Elizabeth”

 

  

The first time he’s summoned, Shiro nearly kills the messenger by accident. It’s in the middle of a training session with some new Peace Guard recruits, halfway through weapons exercises. He’s demonstrating a slashing form when a tiny Quilaxian leaps in front of him, their green gills puffed out in excitement.

“Hey!” He just barely pulls his strike in time, wobbling as he tries to catch his balance. “Watch out!”

“Black Lion to follow this one!” the Quilaxian breathes, their automated voice crackling a bit on the words. Pidge still hasn’t worked out a way to fully adapt Altean biotranslators for species that don’t have vocal cords, but at least the Quilaxians are finally able to communicate with the rest of them, even if the faulty tech has made their language somewhat stilted. “Black Lion to see Light Bringer!”

“Who’s the—you’re talking about the Princess, right?” They nod. “Okay, tell her I’ll head over when we finish these exercises. And be a little more careful next time.”

The new recruits are watching the exchange, blades loose in their hands as they wait nervously for Shiro to return to the demonstration. Keith and a Yvyvian sergeant are reprogramming the training bots in the corner; they’ve learned that starting anyone on the default Altean levels is a recipe for disaster. He turns to rejoin the group, but the Quilaxian’s webbed hand grabs his wrist, grip surprisingly strong for a creature half his size.

“Light Bringer more important!” they urge, yanking him behind as they begin to dash back toward the door. “Light Bringer gave this one directions! Black Lion to follow!”

“Whoa there, okay, okay!” Shiro barely manages to shout instructions to Keith before he’s out the door and down the hall, stumbling from the force of being pulled downward by the Quilaxian as they rush determinedly through the Castle.

He starts to doubt how well they understood the directions they were given, however, as the two of them pass by all of Allura’s usual stations: the bridge, the engine room, the teluvac, the navigation computer. After nearly five years of living here, he knows the Castle layout well enough to know that they’re edging closer to the wing that houses the living quarters. But as he wonders why Allura would summon him to the barracks, he nearly trips over his guide as they skid to a halt in the middle of a side corridor.

“I don’t think this is where—” he starts, but their gills flutter as their translator turns the breath into a “Hush!” With one round finger they tap out a pattern onto the bare face of the wall. It only takes a moment for the panel to slide away with a low hum, revealing a narrow passage he’s never seen before.

“Light Bringer waits here,” the Quilaxian says, shoving him unceremoniously through the opening. They give him a quick salute before rushing away, webbed feet squeaking on the floor with each step. Shiro sees them turn the corner before the panel closes again.

There’s only one door at the end of the short hall. The door latch is lit, meaning Allura must already be inside. Shiro briefly debates on whether or not the situation calls for him to clean up. The Quilaxian seemed serious, but why would she summon only him in an emergency? He hopes that whatever the circumstances are, they’re important enough to excuse appearing to a private summons in his wrinkled training clothes.

“That was much faster than I expected,” Allura greets him, rising from her chair as he steps through the doorway. “You didn’t have to leave training immediately." The room appears to be some kind of small office. She’s standing behind a desk made of glass, several holoscreens open across the surface. A matching glass chair faces a large window that stretches from floor to ceiling, showing off a view of thousands of stars. The other three walls are lined with drawers, each one set with a lock and a label, stacked in rows from floor to ceiling.

The space is neat and organized, but there are a few scattered objects that Shiro has never seen in the Castle’s other command centers: a bright purple flower set in crystal on the desk; a long, silver scabbard leaning in one corner; a faded banner hanging from the ceiling with an Altean letter embroidered in blue. Allura herself is less formal here too, dressed in a pair of loose trousers and a tunic beneath a thin robe tied at her waist. But her hair is pulled to the top of her head, the sign everyone in the Castle has come to know means business.

“I think your messenger believed otherwise,” Shiro says, sighing, “but they might’ve misread the situation.” He takes the seat she offers, a short chair opposite her desk that hovers a few inches above the ground. “And I’ll admit I was a little worried when they led me here. What is this place?"

“The sovereign’s private study, or the ‘King’s Closet,’ as we used to called it. It was my father’s office for personal meetings or classified business.” Allura lightly taps a finger on a petal of the crystal flower, a soft look in her eyes. “Or just a place to be alone sometimes. I’m sure you can understand why I’d like to limit my visitors here, given the Castle’s growing number of residents."

“Of course,” he assures her. Allura nods, her gaze still fixed on the flower for a moment. He can see the gears working in her head, the tiny movements of the muscles in her jaw that betray whenever she’s deep in thought.

“I have something important to ask you,” she begins, folding her hands atop the glass desk, “but before I do, I want you to know that I won’t be angry if you refuse.”

“I’m getting nervous,” Shiro jokes, managing to coax the brief flash of a smile onto her face before it disappears again.

“I’ve been discussing some things with Coran, about the next steps to take as we wait for the Apeiron Court to begin the war crimes hearings," she begins. "He’s in favor of sticking to tradition as we reform the Altean government. Since we don’t have a permanent settlement yet, and there are so few Alteans left, he thinks we should honor our heritage and make a statement about our vitality. A celebratory event would be a chance to raise morale for both the refugees and new Peace Guard soldiers we house here in the Castle. So he wants to set a date for my coronation.”

“Your coronation?” Shiro’s eyebrows raise in surprise. “Sorry, Princess, I thought because your father—I mean, I assumed you were already—“

“Yes,” Allura says, “technically, since his death, I’ve been the ruler of Altea for some time now. But I was in stasis for thousands of years, and we launched the rebellion as soon as I awoke. And during that time, I didn’t think I would, well—” her fingers drum on the top of the desk, a small fidget, “—that I would make it this far. There was no time to hold a proper coronation ceremony. But now that we’re at peace, it’s time for me to take my place as Queen.” She flicks open a new holoscreen in front of him. A video begins to load. “That’s where I need your help.”

The video shows a procession of Alteans, all dressed in flowing robes and laden with jewels, ascending the steps of a tall, imposing temple. At the front of the group are two figures, both men, one walking slightly behind the other. When they reach the top of the stairs the second man bows low before his companion and stops to let the other process first through the door. This second man enters with the rest of the group instead, the leader now far ahead of them all. Allura rewinds the video and points to the pair.

“This was my father’s coronation. He’s the one on the left there, in gold. The man at his side was his uncle, Duke Sariok. He was appointed by my grandfather, the previous king, as the _yluriel._ ”

There is a slight waver in her voice on the word. It’s the telltale sign of a translator error. Allura and Coran explained the bug years ago: there would always be some words that their technology could not directly interpret from language to language, words that had no equivalent in someone else’s tongue. Since the biotranslators in the Castle were Altean-made, Altean slipups were rare—though the younger Paladins took great pleasure in seeing Allura and Coran’s faces when they started incorporating all of the untranslatable swears into their vocabularies. But he’d never heard this new word come out of Pidge’s mouth when she found coding errors. Watching Allura’s expression harden now in frustration, Shiro can tell that she hadn’t planned on her proposal needing an additional language lesson.

“The _yluriel_ is an aspect of the _r’rishia_ —alright, no, it’s someone related to the _tchilluven_ —hm.” Allura frowns, considering her next sentence carefully. “The _yluriel_ is a position of honor in the coronation ceremony. The word means something like ‘guardian of the old.’ It’s someone chosen by the previous sovereign to guard the heir during the time between their predecessor’s death and the new coronation. To protect them until they take the throne.”

“You need a bodyguard, Princess?” She must sense the disbelief in his tone, for Allura smiles again, a little more easily this time.

“I don’t _need_ a bodyguard, certainly. You know I can take care of myself. The _yluriel_ is only a ceremonial now, but in ancient times it was a necessary precaution. The transition period was dangerous time for new sovereigns; if they died before being crowned, the line of succession would be in chaos. Many wars in Altean history were fought over who would take the throne after the death of a weak heir. Appointing a _yluriel_ to guard them was the best means of ensuring the bloodline would live on. Luckily, over time the transfer of power became more peaceful and we no longer had to make such drastic precautions. The _yluriel_ stayed in the ceremony only as a reminder of our past.”

She looks back at the video, the two men frozen at the top of the stairs.

“My father,” she says, “never appointed one for me. It was something that he would’ve done on his deathbed after living a full life, knowing I was fully prepared to take his place. The war stole that time from both of us, I suppose. But that means I’ll have to make the choice myself.” She turns her gaze on him again. “And I’ve chosen you, Shiro.”

“I—” Shiro’s tongue grows heavy in his mouth as he is suddenly too aware of himself. He feels all-too-keenly the patch of cool sweat binding his shirt to his back and chest; his hair sticking out at awkward angles across his forehead; the slight heat in his right shoulder from his Galran arm that never fully cools down. Across from him Allura sits as cool and still as a statue, regal even in her lounge clothes. “I’m very honored, Princess, but I have to ask—”

“Why you? It’s simple.” She counts off on her fingers as she explains. “Coran is the only Altean noble left who can lead the ceremony, so he’s already occupied. Pulling Hunk from kitchen duty for six months would cause a mass mutiny in my forces. Being forced to follow me around would make Pidge hate me. Lance would die three days in because I’d go insane from his chatter. Keith I did consider, but I’m afraid many survivors would be very hostile to the idea of giving a Galra one of the highest positions of honor in the first coronation since our genocide. Which leaves you: a war hero, a seasoned officer, and my Black Paladin, leader of the most prestigious Altean military force. I think your resume speaks for itself.

“But if you want me to be honest? It’s because I trust you. And I think my father—he would’ve trusted you too.”

She presses her hands down flat onto the desk and the video monitor blinks off.

“Like I said,” she adds, “I won’t be angry if you refuse. I have half a mind to convince Coran to abandon the position anyway. We’re the only two left who even know how a traditional coronation ceremony is supposed to go, so no one can judge us if we trim down the proceedings. And if you need more time to think it over—”

“I don’t need more time.” Shiro says. He stands, shoulders itching where his shirt sticks to his skin, and bows. “I’d be happy to accept, Princess.”

She blinks. “Really?”

“Yes.” He’s still half-bent, looking up at her through his eyelashes. “Really.”

Allura pauses for only a second before standing too, nodding back.

“Thank you, Shiro,” she says. “You don’t know how much this means to me.” It’s strange, somehow, to see her look so openly relieved. He still feels like he should apologize for how ill-suited he is, appearing disheveled and dirty here in a king’s—queen’s—study to take a job he was never meant to be given. But Allura doesn't turn up her nose. Gesturing for him to follow, she leads the way out of the office and back into the main hall, closing the hidden panel behind them with a wave of her hand.

“Please do think it over, though. I’ll understand if you change your mind once Coran puts you through the paces. He’s gone a little mad with power over planning this thing, if you ask me. Like one of your—what did Lance call them?—Earth bride-lizards.”

Shiro can’t stop the laugh that bubbles out of him, but Allura doesn’t seem embarrassed. In fact, she laughs a little too, looking pleased that he understood the joke.

“Hey, I’m a war hero and a seasoned officer, remember?” he says, grinning. “I can handle anything.”

 

* * *

  

Coran is not a bridezilla, but he’s pretty close.

It starts with teaching Shiro to walk properly. “Stay one step to the right and two steps behind” seems like a simple instruction, but somehow Coran makes it harder than the reflex tests he had to pass weekly in order to qualify for deep space pilot training. The first _yluriel_ practice session stretches into an hour of Shiro pacing circles around the room while trying not to trip or stumble when Coran stops and changes direction on a dime.

“Remember, you go wherever she goes,” Coran orders, kicking Shiro’s left foot to get it into the proper position for the dozenth time. “Never touching but always within reach.”

“Hold on a second,” Shiro starts, fighting the urge to glare at Coran as he kicks at his other foot. “What do you mean ‘wherever she goes?’ I thought this was just something I had to do in the ceremony itself.”

Coran laughs, clapping him on the shoulder. “Oh, goodness, no! The _yluriel’s_ job _ends_ at the ceremony. Until then, it’s your duty to accompany the Princess at all times! With the obvious exception of following her into the washroom or her private quarters; we wouldn’t want that kind of scandal.” He twists the end of his mustache with a serious look. “We can be a little more lax here inside the Castle, but if she sets foot outside of these walls, you’re expected to be at the Princess’ heels. It’s a tough job, Shiro, but it’s a vital one. There are too many eyes on the her now, especially as she reinstates the Apeiron Court. I’m afraid that a _yluriel_ will be needed for this coronation as more than just a symbol.”

Satisfied with Shiro’s feet at last, Coran takes his place one step to the left, two steps in front, ready to begin another round.

“But don’t worry,” he says, “these six months will just fly by!”

When he is finally released from the lesson, Shiro makes his way quickly to the bridge. He finds Allura at the navigator’s helm, drawing some long calculation into the holomap with the tip of her finger.

“You didn’t tell me how serious this was,” he says as quietly as possible, hoping that the few scattered officers on the bridge are too occupied with calibrating the drone cannons to eavesdrop. “If you think someone might try to attack you before the coronation you’ll need more security than me alone. We should increase patrols to make sure that—”

“You’ve started rehearsing with Coran, I see,” Allura sighs, twisting her hand at the wrist to spin the map to the left. “Listen, Shiro, I told you I can take care of myself. I have a lifetime of combat experience and extensive military training. I don’t think I need to remind you of what I’m capable of in a fight.” She levels a look at him over the projection of a two-pronged spiral galaxy. “Yes, there are some who are unhappy to see me triumph over Zarkon, but they are far outnumbered by others we’ve freed from tyranny. The Peace Guard has a spy network so large now that I could watch live feed of the icecaps melting on Omega-5A if I wished. The last thing I’m afraid of is an assassin crouching in the dark.”

“I know,” Shiro says, “but that doesn’t mean they won’t send any.”

“Let them try.” Allura waves and the universe shrinks, galaxies compressing into her palm. “I’m organizing an intergalactic court that hasn’t met in over ten thousand years. They’ll have to fight the other hundreds of war criminals thirsting for my blood if they want a shot at me themselves.”

“That’s the _last_ thing you could've said to make me feel better.”

Allura simply waves her hand again to send him on his way.

Once he's confident enough in Shiro’s ability to keep his posture intact, Coran starts the second phase of the training regimen. It turns out to be just following Coran around the ship at all hours, which is exactly as irritating as Shiro thought it would be. He can't tell if Coran changes pace so often just to keep him on alert, or if that's the way he's always moved and Shiro never noticed before he was ordered to switch between walking, sprinting, and erratically hopping at a moment’s notice. Within two weeks his feet are more sore than they were in Garrison bootcamp.

Since this stage requires making a fool of himself in public, they inform the other Paladins of the planned coronation date and the reason Shiro will have to accompany Allura at every planetside function. They react exactly as Allura predicted: Keith is instantly focused on the security concerns, Hunk and Pidge are excited about the prospect of the universe’s biggest intercultural alien party, and Lance acts like not being chosen as _yluriel_ is the single greatest betrayal he’s ever faced.

“What does Shiro have that I don’t have?” he demands of Allura, crossing his arms with a pout. She doesn’t even bother glancing up from the trade report she’s reading while the others watch Shiro try to match Coran’s stride while skipping around the kitchen.

“The ability to keep his mouth shut for more than five ticks,” she replies. True to form, Lance protests this claim for the next ten minutes.

After a final test that involves chasing Coran through a complicated handmade obstacle course—leaping over hurdles while still maintaining the distance of one step to the right and two steps behind—Shiro can’t describe the relief he feels when he is declared fit for duty. He’s even more relieved to discover that the ceremony to appoint a _yluriel_ is very short. Coran simply gathers the Paladins together, recites a brief history of the tradition, calls Shiro’s name, and bids him take his place at Allura’s side. But the ending remarks become more and more incomprehensible as Coran finishes the speech.

“Know that you walk _tchilluven iy raxizeel_ , and by _a’hoyen_ you _a’sika ninukil Altea garras._ ” He bows to Allura, then to Shiro, and claps his hands together. “Well, that’s it! And just in time for dinner, eh?”

In the mess hall Shiro takes a seat next to Pidge, who sees his worried expression and immediately pushes a bowl of deep-fried yeetfruit stalks at him.

“I need your tips on surviving the Learn Altean software,” he says as he fills his plate, “or else I’ll be the first _yluriel_ in history who couldn’t understand his own job.”

“Which part did you miss?” Pidge asks around a large mouthful of Hunk’s famous Gorgonix Milk Cheese Mac-n-Cheese. He tells her and she chews for a moment, translating in her head.

“He said something like, ‘Know that you walk in the shadow of all the kings who stood before her, and by guarding her life, you guard the life of most sacred Altea now and forevermore,’” she says, adjusting her glasses with one hand and spearing another forkful of noodles with the other. “Or in layman’s terms, ‘The fate of the most important person on our planet is in your hands, so don’t blow it.’”

Shiro blinks. Pidge makes a sympathetic face and pats his shoulder.

“But no pressure,” she says.

 

* * *

 

Despite the rigor of training, Shiro’s first few weeks on the job are painfully slow.

“We’ll stick to protocol when we’re planetside, but you will not tail me around my own ship,” Allura insists. “I have absolute trust in every soldier under my command and enough problems with unity here as it is. The last thing I need is for the Digodi to start asking why I feel the need to flout a personal guard every time I resolve one of their clan disputes.”

“Hey, that’s fine by me,” Shiro tells her, and he means it. For the one thing he’s learned from serving under her for this long is that despite Coran’s fears, Allura is only a few hairs short of invincibility—and not just because of her powerful quintessence abilities. She lives like someone who plans to die fighting. She handles politics and battle the same way, and she’s near-undefeated in both. Following her around nonstop, Shiro thinks, would only be getting in her way.

It’s almost a full month before he’s finally called to report for duty. A small exoplanet in the Duriang System called Erimos has asked for a formal alliance with the Castle of Lions and its new Peace Guard. A treaty will be signed by the Princess and their council in the heart of Erimos’ most sacred city. He and Allura take a small shuttle from the Castle to the surface, landing smoothly in the docking bay the Erimosi have strewn with flowers and leaves to mark the occasion.

“Do you have to stand in that spot the whole time?” Allura asks, smoothing her skirt as they wait for the Council’s escorts to guide them to the temple. “I have to crane my head at an odd angle if I want to look at you when we talk.”

“The rule is one step to the right, two steps behind. If I put one foot out of line I think Coran might fly down here himself to correct me,” Shiro says. “But we’ll figure out a method eventually, so don’t strain your neck on my account. Just look straight ahead.”

Allura frowns. “But that’s hardly polite! You’ll be talking _at_ me, not _with_ me.”

“I’m not supposed to do anything _with_ you. I’m a soldier, and you’re a queen. Your station’s so far above mine that you’re basically in space.”

“We’re both in space,” she points out drily. “We’re practically always in space.” She looks annoyed now, her brows furrowing as she continues, “Yes, you’re a soldier, but so am I. I’m not a queen yet, but I have been a soldier all my life. So here’s what I propose: you will not treat me like some distant moon you’re doomed to revolve around, but like the soldier you’ve fought with, the person whom you respect. I don’t want your worship, but I value your respect.”

She folds her arms across her chest. “Therefore I’ll take your suggestion. I’ll look ahead when we talk, but you’ll still have to talk with me. I won’t be able to get through this if we have to march in a line like Hurgellian ants for six months in complete silence. Is that understood?”

Shiro cannot think of anything to say other than, “Yes, Princess.”

The Erimosi enter the docking bay at last. They’re tall, spindly creatures, limbs bright blue and notched at the joints like insects. A troupe of them in the center are wearing yellow sashes and carrying spears: the promised escort. Their clicking speech gradually morphs into words and sentences in his mind as the biotranslaters kick in.

_There! Do you see? Look there, the one in white!_

_The Lion Queen?_

_Is that what all other-worldlings are like?_

_She is so small, too soft. No armor, a soft-shell._

_The Lion Queen…there!_

_She is no soft-shell. Look, see her eyes: she has armor._

_Who is the other-worldling behind her? Not a king?_

_Look, that’s her, that’s the Lion Queen!_

_No, not a king. He is another kind of armor, I think._

_The Lion Queen! The Lion Queen!_

Shiro can’t help but feel a little embarrassed by the gossip. He glances at Allura, but she's already facing forward, her eyes closed in concentration. Slowly, her skin blooms with the same bright blue shade as the Erimosi’s chitin. The crowd gasps and murmurs with excitement, awed and amazed that the Lion Queen is showing them such admiration. One of the spear-carriers steps forward and beckons with one hand. With a nod, Allura begins to walk through the crowd as they clear a path for her. Flower petals swirl around her heels, catching in the curls of her unbound hair.

Shiro trails behind, one step to the right and two steps behind, and prays that he can keep up.

 

* * *

 

During the war it seemed like they were always moving, always _going_ , but by the end of month two Shiro realizes he vastly underestimated the travel required by peacetime. He attends committee meetings and ceremonial dinners and cabinet sessions. He goes to balls and banquets and benefits. He circles the universe thrice over at Allura’s side like they are a comet that can’t stop picking up speed, coming ever closer to shooting out of orbit and burning up.

He admits this after one particularly liquor-heavy fundraising concert and Allura, to his great surprise, finds the comparison incredibly funny.

Allura surprises him in many ways. After they determine the easiest way to talk in formation, he watches her from the side at every step, studying her ever-changing array of expressions. Although the polarized film of Altean eyes can make it hard to see where she’s looking, her emotions are always obvious to him. She seems to feel everything so deeply that it can’t help but surface on her face. To any other politician it would be a fatal flaw. Yet somehow baring that honesty, flaunting that unfiltered truth, makes Allura rise ever higher.

It’s impossible to deny her popularity. Lines of hopeful soldiers flock to the Castle gate whenever they land, begging for a chance to serve the Princess in the Peace Guard and be admitted into their already-full barracks. Senators ask for her advice. High priests ask for her blessing. Many nobles ask—repeatedly, Shiro notes with some distaste—for her hand. Every species they meet seems to have a new title for her. He hears them shouted by the crowds that gather on every side the second Allura’s feet touch the ground: _Lion Goddess! The Victorious One! The Bright Empress!_

“I suppose I do tend to glow a little when I’m restoring quintessence,” Allura sighs as they stroll through the lush gardens of Kelon K’elean, where every three-limbed Kelonasa insists on calling her ‘Light Bringer,’ “but I can’t help it! It’s a natural side effect!”

“It could be worse,” Shiro offers. “You could sparkle too.” Without looking, Allura reaches back and swats him on the arm.

“You’re one to talk. I know _your_ popular title and it’s equally cheesy.”

“Nice try, but I don’t have a title.”

Allura raises an eyebrow. “You haven’t heard it?” she asks. “Well, it didn’t really catch on until we attended that memorial parade on the Zeenar moon, but it’s been everywhere since. You’re ‘the Shadow.’ Unlike me, you seem to have found one nickname that stuck above the rest. I really hope ‘The Whiskered Princess’ doesn’t catch on like that.”

“Okay, now I _know_ you’re making this all up,” Shiro insists, but the conversation is cut short by the arrival of a Kelonasa bearing a tray of fruit. He sets it upon a small table to serve them, a process that takes twice as long as it should have because he salutes Allura nearly a dozen times between every move. Shiro’s stomach is grumbling by the time the Kelonasa’s lower arms finally afix the table’s legs in place, and after thanking him Shiro immediately reaches for a piece covered in soft blue and green swirls. It has a thick pit inside, like a cherry.

“Will the Light Bringer and her Shadow need anything else before I leave?” the Kelonasa asks.

Shiro chokes.

“That will be all, thank you.” Allura smiles serenely at the Kelonasa and slaps Shiro on the back hard enough to make him swallow the pit whole. The Kelonasa looks at them for a moment, slightly bewildered, before saluting one last time and leaving at last.

“Easy there, Shadow.” Allura pops a striped berry into her mouth, looking smug. “You’re supposed to save _my_ life, not the other way around.”

From then on it’s impossible to ignore: _the Shadow_. Unlike Allura’s titles, his seems to be whispered more often than cheered, but he can still pick it out from the gossip that blooms like weeds around them wherever they go. Allura picks it up too. At a dinner on Triton-873 she leans a little further to the right than usual, breaking Coran’s ironclad chair spacing rule.

“I’ll make them stop, if you want,” she whispers, glancing at the ambassador across from her, chattering to his wife about last time he met “the Princess and her Shadow” at a refugee relocation meeting. Her lips purse around the rim of her glass, her eyes narrowed in the man’s direction. She looks genuinely annoyed on Shiro’s behalf. “You were an important figure in my forces long before this arrangement. They ought to know your name _._ ”

“Don’t worry about it.” Shiro leans in a little more to make sure they’re not overheard. “I’d rather they stick with this than come up with something to match ‘The Whiskered Princess.’”

Allura just barely stifles her laugh. She glares at him but it only breaks into a wider smile, which she tries to hide by taking a large sip of her drink. It’s a horrible poker face, but even though they can see her gossiping in front of them, the ambassador and his wife don’t seem suspicious.

That’s what people see in her, Shiro realizes. That’s what all of those names are trying to capture: her spirit, her brightness. Once she shines on you, you want nothing more than to bask in the sun. Or ignore the clouds on the horizon.

 

* * *

 

The first assembly of the Apeiron Court is held on an uncolonized planet in the Haadaaz-2 Quadrant, selected because its dry surface and lack of resources make it neutral ground to any empires looking to claim it. The younger Paladins rush to the windows to watch the thousands of ships docking on the surface while the Castle hovers in the stratosphere, waiting for landing orders. Shiro is in place behind Allura while she takes the helm, ready to follow when she disembarks.

But before they start the landing jets, a video conference pings from six-legged page with fluffy ears and cloven feet, bearing instructions for “the Most Noble Princess of Altea.”

“It’s a security measure, Your Highness,” the page explains, wagging her two tails nervously. “Some Court members fear retaliation by supporters of Zarkon who are still in hiding. Everyone in attendance today will disguise themselves with cloaking devices during the procession to and from the hall. But since you can change shape at will, we ask that instead of using a cloaking device, you take a different form and leave behind your guard in order to protect your identity.”

“I will not!” Allura scoffs. “This Court is a symbol of peace and diplomacy. It represents everything we’ve won back in the war, and you want me to begin its first assembly by cowering behind a mask?”

“Of course you may resume your natural appearance and join the Shadow once you are inside.” The page twists her four hands together. “I’m sorry, but making this an open event has made full security screenings impossible. We’ve stationed as many guards as we can spare, but the crowds can barely be contained. Please, Your Highness,” she begs, “you are the most prominent speaker here today. Your safety is more important than any other guest’s.”

This, Shiro knows, is the wrong thing to say. Allura’s face hardens instantly, her eyes growing cold as her hand clenches on the edge of the control panel. The other Paladins exchange glances with one another, silently debating who should step up to attempt damage control. But it’s Coran who comes forward first.

“The crowds are much bigger than we predicted, Princess. This seems to be the best option for everyone, I think,” he says. “Wait, I have a better idea! Once you’re disguised, we’ll all exit the ship together so that no one stands out. That way Shiro can stay close to you without giving away your position. What do you say, Shiro?”

“It certainly wouldn’t hurt,” Shiro agrees. Allura turns her head and gives him a long, scathing look. It’s hard not to wilt under it, but he sets his jaw and holds her gaze.

“Fine,” she concedes, turning back to face the screen. “My forces and I will march together, and I will disguise myself until the Black Paladin and I enter the Court chambers.”

There is a short—and strained—discussion of what form the Princess should take. Allura favors Hunk’s pick: a Bhijinta, one of the species that colonized this Quadrant. They have several among the Peace Guard already, and another one will therefore go unnoticed. It takes only seconds for Allura’s skin to turn a mottled green as her nose sinks until her profile is flat and snakelike. They find a cloak to cover her hair and ceremonial robes. When it’s done, the difference is so striking that even Shiro doubts he’d be able to pick her out from the crowd.

For once, the two of them are quiet as they wait in the entry dock for the airlock seal to clear. He can feel the frustration radiating from Allura in waves. Thinking of how he’ll have to deal with her in this mood makes him more nervous about the assembly than he already is. That’s why he has to ask her to repeat herself when the all-clear chimes.

“I said, ‘Give me a hand, please.’”

“We’re not supposed to act like we’re—”

“I can’t see my feet, Shiro.” She points down. The hem of her dress is dragging on the floor. “The average Bhijinta is a good head shorter than I am, so I had to make some adjustments. But I have no desire to make my entrance—even in disguise—by tripping down the landing door steps.”

He offers her his right arm. The Peace Guard has to exit in small groups in order to fit everyone through the airlock, and they slip in near the middle of the pack. Everyone around is chatting excitedly about the event, about the honor of accompanying the leaders of the liberation. They even gush about Allura herself, but no one spares the fuming Bhijinta at his side a second glance.

“Look,” Shiro says at last, as they take their cue to pass through the airlock, “no one will think less of you for this. Do you really have to fight me about it?”

Allura doesn’t look at him, but she does squeeze his elbow as they descend the steps. The sensation is dull—his right arm was only given enough nerves to register pressure, not texture, and it’s muffled further under his sleeve—but he takes the cue to edge closer, giving her more support to lean on as she gingerly toes the hem of her dress out of the way. When they reach the ground she pulls away quickly to merge with the wave of Peace Guard soldiers. He stops himself from reaching out and tugging her back. It feels wrong, somehow, to see her walk so far ahead after all these weeks of matching steps.

“Yes,” she says, barely audible above the din, “if you’re so intent on acting like we’re still at war.”

The page wasn’t wrong: the crowd seems to fill every empty inch of this planet. They pack either side of the cleared processional path, faces and voices and flags blending together like a crashing sea of color and sound. Shiro’s ears begin ringing as his biotranslator tries to take it all in. There must be hundreds, no, thousands of spoken languages being shouted at once around him.

_Look! It’s the Castle of Lions!_

_The Paladins of Voltron are here!_

_The Princess has come! Princess Allura!_

The crowd swells at that, pressing closer on all sides. The soldiers laugh as they jostle together, waving good-naturedly at the cheering spectators. He can see a flash of green up ahead: Pidge, hoisted on Hunk’s shoulders. Shiro attempts a smile at a hovering JRNL-BOT, its lens flashing as it snaps footage, but sweat is starting to slide down his brow. The gawkers closest to the front are straining against the holobarrier posted with guards, asking for snapshots, asking for handshakes, asking to _look here, look here, Shadow! Where’s the Princess? Where’s the Light Bringer?_

He tries to keep moving at an even pace. He has no line of sight on Allura.

At last they reach the gate of the assembly hall and push through the entrance with all the speed of sand funneling through an hourglass. Shiro’s head is throbbing, his mouth dry and sour. He can feel the familiar clench of panic take hold in his stomach, squeezing his throat tight like a fist. The line of blue-uniformed Peace Guard soldiers seems endless. He fights the urge to push through them, tear a hole through the wall of bodies until he finds an empty space again, a quiet corner, somewhere he can _breathe_.

“Sir?” An Yvyvian lieutenant is at his side, making an aborted salute with what little room she has to raise her arm. Shiro nods back. “The Princess has reached the Court chambers. She’s given you permission to remain with the rest of the troops in the audience hall.”

A dismissal. Shiro’s anxiety ebs to make way for his irritation. He wonders what she would do if he marched in anyway and stood at her side for the entire assembly. _Dismiss you again, in front of the whole universe this time_ , the Allura in his head answers.

“Tell her I’ll meet her at the door when we’re ready to leave. ‘As Coran instructed,’ remind her.” The lieutenant salutes again and darts away.

The crowd thins as they flow into the thousands of seats above the Court benches. He can see Lance waving to him from a few rows down, one seat empty between him and Hunk. Behind them a hundred-foot holoscreen displays a clock in five different numerical systems, counting down the minutes until the Apeiron Court begins its inaugural session. In the center of the hall, separated from the crowd by a ring of protective shields and guards, the Court members are small, almost toy-like. He can see neither Bhijintan nor Altean Allura among them.

“This is insane!” Lance says breathlessly as Shiro takes his seat. “Did you see how many tentacles the Emperor of Higuin has? He’s like five octopuses in a trenchcoat—ow!”

Keith retracts his elbow from Lance's ribs. “It’s rude to stare! And it's 'octopi,' not 'octopuses.'”

“Yeah, Lance, don’t be rude!” Pidge adds. “If you were staring you should’ve counted fifty-four tentacles, so he’s actually six-point-seven-five octopi in a trenchcoat.”

“Hey, Shiro,” Hunk says, raising his voice to be heard over the bickering of the other three, “aren’t you supposed to be with Allura?”

“There's been a slight change of plans.” He hopes the grimace doesn’t show too much on his face. "The Princess decided I should join her after the assembly instead."

The grimace must've tipped him off, for Hunk only winces in sympathy and replies, "Ouch" as all of the countdown clocks chime zero.

Though the massive turnout would indicate otherwise, the assembly is long and dull. While their voices are projected through a sound system so that the crowd can hear, the Court’s conversations on how to begin the war crime trials are fixated on details: where to find neutral ground to build the courthouse; who should execute sentencing; which planets have rights to manage the imprisonment of the accused. It’s hours of restrained political bickering. Shiro stays vigilant only because he has to keep upright to make sure Lance's head doesn't slip off his shoulder and snap his neck in his sleep.

What jolts him out of the haze are the snatches of a familiar voice cutting in and out from the conversation, the glimpses of a figure in white and blue standing to give an address. Near the end, a JRNL-BOT wired to project onto the holoscreens gets a shot of Allura presenting her argument on judicial procedure. Those still paying attention begin to cheer when they see her face. Her closing statement is the only one to garner a small round of applause from her fellow judges, and as Pidge stands and shouts, “That’s our girl!” Shiro chastises himself for being so tempted to forgive her out of sentiment. If she was determined to fight, so was he.

But when the assembly ends and everyone begins to exit, he can’t stop his heart from pounding as he takes the stairs two at a time, dodging bodies to get to the front of the pack. The Court members are escorted out last, and it feels like a year before he glimpses the line of them surrounded by guards and sentry bots. He pushes through, scanning their faces quickly as he goes. And then he sees her.

“You should've paged my comm, I was waiting for—” he starts, and says nothing else. Allura is grinning, no, _glowing_. She’s folded her cloak over her arm, her dress now at a perfect tailored length to suit her full height, head tilted down in order to speak with the stocky Morkl political next to her. She looks exactly the same, yet she is radiant with more happiness than he’s ever seen on her. He stands stock-still as she looks up, catching his eye.

“Shiro!” she greets him. “It went so well, can you believe it? The first intergalactic court in ten thousand years, the first real step toward peace!” She grins at the Morkl, whose three mouths start smiling too. “Senator S’girghan did not think they would see it happen in their lifetime!”

“It’s an incredible accomplishment, Princess.” The Morkl nods to her and to Shiro. “But I am sorry to leave you. My ship awaits. We will meet again at the first trial, I hope.” Reaching into the pocket of their robes, S’girghan pulls out a small remote. With the push of a button, static dances over their body, rendering them nearly transparent. “You and the Shadow should activate your cloaking devices. The crowds are a little more subdued now, and with speed you should get to your vessel in no time at all.” They bow again, and with a final burst of static disappear from sight completely.

“Ready when you are, Princess.” Shiro offers her his arm again, but Allura doesn’t take it. She wraps the loose end of the cloak around her hand like a fighter wrapping her wrists before stepping into the ring.

“I’m not hiding this time,” she says. “You heard the Senator: the crowds are smaller now. I’ll walk fast, but I’ll walk in my own shape.” She lifts her chin, determined. “We took a big step today, but we have to keep moving forward, Shiro. This is peacetime. We have to act like it.”

He wants to be angry with her. He wants to argue her down, make her understand. He wants her to know what it felt to lose sight of her in that crowd like a kite cut from its string. But that radiant pride is still there, still gleaming in her eyes. He can still hear the crowd cheering when they saw her face on the screen. He can remember the pride he felt himself when he saw her too.

“Alright,” Shiro says, “on one condition.”

 

* * *

 

When they step outside, it looks as though Senator S’girghan was right after all. Drained from the assembly, the waiting crowds are much quieter and stand farther back from the barrier. The other paladins and most of Allura’s soldiers have already gone ahead; he can see a few blue Peace Guard uniforms trickling up the Castle’s landing steps.

“Stay close,” he says, pressing his left hand against hers briefly to make sure she’s still holding on. Now that she’s not worried about losing her balance, her grip is much lighter and harder for the metal to detect through his sleeve. They start down the path.

At first it all goes smoothly. The crowd is distracted by the vids overhead playing clips from the proceedings and a few interviews with important politicians on how the assembly went. He and Allura can walk at a brisk pace without the Peace Guard packed in formation. They cover one-third of the journey quickly, the Castle door open and beckoning up ahead.

Then someone shouts, “The Light Bringer! The Light Bringer is here!” and everything falls to pieces.

The crowd surges forth like a wave. The holobarrier shivers, then trembles, then bulges with the weight of so many pressing against it to get a better look. Flashbulbs go off like flares, white and blinding. The volume of the shouts they heard before is nothing compared to the roar now. Both of them flinch with pain as their translators falter. Every word turn to sounds with no meaning but frenzied joy.

“We have to go faster,” Shiro insists. He puts his spare hand over Allura’s again, holding her to him. Her grip on his arm is much tighter now; it might even be painful if she were on his left side.

“Don’t panic,” Allura says through her teeth, smiling and waving to the crowd. The noise gets even louder and bots click photos faster than strobe lights. “If we rush, someone will be trampled as they all try to follow us at once. Just keep moving.”

One of the guards bracing the barrier gestures to them and says something, their words lost on the wind, but a few seconds later sentry bots hurry out of the hall and form a circle around the two of them. One rolls in front of them and salutes, sweeping its steel arm in front of it in a grand gesture: _May I lead the way?_ Shiro nods back, grateful. With this escort in place, he relaxes a little. Now the end of the path is in sight.

At the edge of the landing steps Allura tugs on him, a command to stop. She bends down to give the lead sentry an order, and it salutes again and zooms away. When it returns, the guard who summoned the sentries is with it.

“That was very quick thinking on your part, sir,” Allura says. “My Paladin and I are immensely grateful.”

“Please, Your Highness, it was no trouble.” The guard bows deeply. “My job is to ensure your safety. I do not require your thanks.”

“But you have it regardless. Is there any way I can be of service to you as you were to me today?”

The guard thinks for a moment.

“I have a young daughter,” he says, “who is an admirer of yours. She said if she were ever to meet Your Highness, there was something important she wanted to say. If I may, could I pass on her message?”

Allura smiles. “Of course. What is it?”

The guard says something, but again the noise of the crowd carries it away. Allura shakes her head and beckons him closer. Her hand, now loose again, begins to pull away from Shiro’s arm as she leans her head towards the guard’s. On instinct Shiro steps forward too. From here he can see the guard tuck one arm behind his back, bowing again before raising his mouth to Allura’s ear to say:

“ _Vrepit sa_.”

Shiro doesn’t think. He surges forward and grabs Allura, whipping her around and taking her place with his back to the guard. Something fires behind him.

For a second, for a lifetime, the crowd is completely silent. Allura is caged in his arms. He can feel every beat of her heart against his chest, her breath hot on his neck. He waits for the pain, but nothing comes. He waits for another shot. Why isn’t there another shot?

Something thuds against the back of his legs. He looks down.

From the ground, the guard groans in pain, a red flicker of electricity still dancing across him where the sentry’s net is still tangled around his arm. The gun in his limp hand is charred and smoking from the overload. The sentry’s screen flashes green: _THREAT NEUTRALIZED_ , it reads. It raises its head to look at Shiro.

 _GO_ , it drones.

On a normal day, it takes a lot of strength to lift Allura. To accommodate for their shapeshifting powers, Alteans have a much higher body density; this was Coran’s explanation for why sparring with him often felt like trying to punch through a brick wall. But now Shiro hauls her up as if she weighs nothing. His muscles twinge but he can’t feel anything through the fear and adrenaline coursing through him. Screams start to break out in the crowd. He takes the landing stairs two at the time and crashes through the airlock, shouting at the few panicked Peace Guard soldiers still waiting there.

“Comm to bridge!” he yells. “Someone call the bridge now! We need to take off immediately!”

He gets as far as the elevator before his legs start to give. The Castle shudders as Coran announces takeoff, the propulsion jets already firing. He half-drops, half-slumps Allura against the wall, panting. His back definitely feels the effort now of carrying her now.

“You alright?” he gasps.

She nods. Her left hand is still clenched around his right elbow. In the chaos, somehow, she didn’t lose her hold.

“Yes,” she says, eerily quiet. “Over your shoulder I saw the sentry move in when he—it was faster than all three of us, thankfully.” Suddenly her eyes grow wide. “I didn’t see if—if you were—Shiro, are you hurt?”

“No,” he assures her. “No. I’m fine. Like you said, the sentry was faster.”

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. “To the bridge, then,” she says. “I need to wormhole us out.” He nods, but Allura stops him from hitting the button. “Not yet. Catch your breath first.”

She makes him wait another minute or so before they start moving again, watching him carefully to make sure he’s not winded. Finally the elevator starts going up. Allura taps her bracelet and reports what happened to Coran, and after that orders are booming over the comm at lightning speed to get the Castle in gear for the wormhole jump.

When the doors chime their arrival at the bridge, Shiro asks, “One more time, just to be sure: are you alright, Princess?”

“Yes,” she answers. “Thank you.” Her voice is calm and still, an uncertain sea recovering from a storm. She squeezes his arm again.

There is a loud _snap_ , and something heavy flops against his side. He feels a sudden, sharp pain in his right shoulder.

“Oh,” Allura says, looking down, “ _quiznak_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luckily for everyone--including yours truly--this fic is 2/3 complete, so hopefully the update time will not take 8 years!! (BUT NO PROMISES)


	2. II

_The trumpets and the ancientness were proof of our survival; and the king’s young daughter would rule the peace._

—Sam Knight on the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, from [“London Bridge is Down”](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge)

 

_To be a king and wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasant to them that bear it._

—Elizabeth I in her last speech to Parliament on November 30, 1601

 

 

In the days following the attack, Coran changes his stance on _yluriel_ procedure completely. Gone are the days of escorting Allura only when she had to travel planetside; the new rule is that Shiro has to stick by her every waking minute of the day. Now that he knows her schedule forwards and backwards, this might have been an easy task had Allura chosen to go along with it. Instead, she’s become more difficult than ever. 

It begins as soon as they exit the wormhole after the assassination attempt. The same page who’d delivered the news about the cloaking devices appears on the comm to report that the sentries had captured the assassin. At the moment he’s in custody onboard an Erimosi ship, who await Allura’s orders on how to proceed.

“It’s a miracle that you survived, Your Highness,” the page says, looking close to tears. “We will notify you at once when he has been executed.”

“No!” Allura’s hands clench at her sides. “You will keep him alive!”

“What? But Your Highness, he wanted to—”

“I know very well what he wanted to do. That’s why he’ll be taken to the Andromedan Fortress with the others who are to be tried. He will face the Apeiron Court in due time.”

“But Princess—”

With a sudden jerk, Allura brings her fist into the air and slams it onto the navigation console. The holoscreen buckles, sending bursts of half-formed coordinates into the air. The entire bridge is stunned silent.

“ _No._ We do not execute our enemies like warlords anymore. We have laws. We have order. He will go to the Fortress and he will face justice on _my_ terms, not Zarkon’s.” Wrenching her skirt out of the way, she steps off the platform, headed towards the hall. “Alert the Erimosi. I’m going to accompany them personally to deliver this would-be assassin to his cell.”

Shiro takes a single step, holding his numb arm against his chest, before she turns around to look him square in the eye.

“I will accompany them alone.” 

“No,” he says, “you can’t just—”

“You are useless in this state, Shiro. You will remain onboard until your repairs are completed. In the meantime, Keith and Lance will escort me to the Erimosi.” Her boots click against the tile as she storms out of the bridge. “That’s an order.”

Keith and Lance shoot him panicked glances as they hurried after her, but there is nothing else they can do but obey.

“It could’ve been worse,” Pidge offers later when Shiro meets her in the engine room. She wiggles his thumb back and forth to make sure nothing sticks. “She only crushed the joint control mechanism, which was easy enough to repair. She could’ve damaged the neural pathways, or the motor control feedback chip, or snapped the whole thing in half.”

He lets Pidge rotate his arm as she examines it. She frowns at the imprints on the inside of his elbow, near the cutoff point at his bicep. She’d tried to buff them out but to no avail; that panel could only be removed if the rest of the arm was. He’ll have to keep five dents the exact size and shape of Allura’s fingertips. 

“She could’ve snapped the whole thing in half,” repeats Pidge, sighing. “I’ll just have to ignore the cosmetic damage. Even if it’s really, _really_ hard.”

“Sorry, whose arm is this again?” Shiro says, poking her cheek as he rises from the lab table. Pidge sticks out her tongue. “Thanks for the checkup, Doc.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She waves him away, already focused on reordering her repair notes. “Come find me again if you notice anything lagging or twitching. Most importantly, don’t shake hands with Allura anytime soon. Actually, don’t shake hands with Allura ever again.”

Shiro sighs. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

 

* * *

 

Things have not improved much after that. Though he resumed his post after his arm was fixed, Allura seems more than reluctant to have Shiro around her at all. Her current escape strategy seems to revolve around finding every blind spot he has and exploiting them to disappear inside the ship for hours at a time. That strategy is wearing thin, though. After all, there are very few places on the ship where she can escape completely unnoticed.

“If you’re going to stalk me day and night, the least you could do is help me sort through the mail,” Allura says when he finds her holed up in the King’s Closet. She’s half-hidden behind a score of holoscreens. The blue panels hum gently as they hover throughout the room like lazy fireflies.

“I wouldn’t have to stalk you if you didn’t keep trying to avoid me,” Shiro counters as he sits down in the spare chair. He catches the holoscreen she tosses his way, opening a glowing list of messages that drop down all the way to the floor. “This is the fifth time this week, you know. A new record.”

Allura only hums, her right elbow propped on the desk as she scrolls through a message written in alien characters so small he has to squint to separate them. It’s then that he notices the ring on her finger.

The stone is unlike any he’s ever seen before. The colors seem to move, flaring and flashing like a living flame, tongues of red and pink and amber twirling around one another endlessly in single gem. It’s set in a band of a metal that glints gold at one angle and deep blue at another. As his gaze follows her hand when she reaches back to scratch her neck, he finds two other matching stones—one set in an elaborate collar around her throat, the other capping a diadem nestled in her hair—that he hadn’t noticed behind the blue screens.

“I know what you’re about to ask and no, don’t worry, I’m not skipping out on a state dinner,” Allura says the second he opens his mouth. “These are the Three Sisters, the jewels I have to wear during the coronation. I borrowed them from the treasury in order to practice for the ceremony.” She scratches at her neck again, frowning as she pulls at the thick chains. “Unfortunately they are as famously heavy as they are famously beautiful.”

“Three Sisters?”

“An old Altean myth about the creation of our planet. Three goddesses came down from the heavens to create the land, the sea, and all living creatures. They gave the world to the Altean people and then went back to their home, becoming the three brightest stars in our sky.” She points to each piece as she names them: “Amara—” the ring, “—Abiza—” the crown, “—and Allura,” the necklace. “The myth says that the first Altean who mapped the stars became the first king.”

“I think Pidge has read that story before,” Shiro muses, watching the light dance off the stones. “I didn’t know it was the story of your name.”

“It’s a common Altean name.” She shrugs as she finishes tapping out a reply to the near-unreadable message, closing the screen once it sends and moving onto the next. “There were scores of Alluras running around in my youth. I think the only reason my father chose it was that he already had two sisters named Abiza and Amara. But I suppose I could pick something else when I’m Queen, for my regnal name. New name, new monarch. What do you think?”

Shiro pauses. It’s hard to read her expression through the moving blue lights. The jewels do look heavy on her—the weight of three massive suns pushing her down.

“Being common doesn’t make the name meaningless,” he says carefully. “What does it mean?”

“It means ‘soft-hearted’ but it might as well mean ‘pushover.’” She abandons the message for a moment, leaning back in her chair to examine the ring on her finger, twisting it back and forth. “It’s the southernmost of the three stars and the dimmest. In the myth, Allura created the plants and animals while her two sisters fought, their battle carving out the shapes of the continents where land met sea. She was the compassionate one, the peacemaker; my father reminded me of that every time I got in trouble for picking fights. As far as namesakes go she’s as boring as it gets. But you didn’t answer my question.”

She swats the holoscreen aside, now before him in full color. Her face is hard, jaw set. “What do _you_ think?”

“You call yourself whatever you want,” Shiro answers. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

“Yes it does,” she insists. “It matters to me.”

Her eyes flicker down and linger on his right arm before darting away. She grabs another holoscreen and pulls it between them. Shiro opens his mouth to speak, but doesn’t. All he can think is that he should’ve had Pidge try harder to get the dents out.

“I’m sorry that I keep running from you.” The screen becomes a map in front of her, thin blue lines etched into the shape of a circular sea. “It’s not you, it’s just—” She bites the inside of her cheek, twists the ring on her hand again like tightening a screw. “It feels like people expect me to hide behind you now, and I hate it. They think I’m weak.”

“No one thinks that.”

Allura shakes her head. “They might not want to say it aloud, but they do.”

“No. You’re wrong, Princess.” He bats the map away with his hand. “No one thinks you’re weak. Not a single soul on this ship and no soldier on any other in the universe. We’d follow you into hell if you asked. So it doesn’t matter what I think about your name, because it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about your name. Your name doesn’t make you who you are.”

He feels strangely buoyant after saying it, as if the words have been tethering something down inside him. Allura stares at him, her eyes wide and shining in the light like a cat’s.

“Well,” she says finally, “if you feel so strongly about it, ‘Queen Allura’ it is.”

They both return to reading in silence. When he next sneaks a glance at her, Allura is concentrating on a trade report in the Nrittan quadrant, chewing at her bottom lip as she scans a cluster of charts. Her hand creeps up to touch the necklace again, softly, as if she’s afraid it’s another thing she might crush.

 

* * *

 

The halfway point of his _yluriel_ service is marked by a surprise “secret emergency Voltron team meeting” that Coran calls in the dead of night. The Paladins shuffle sleepily onto the couch, groggily complaining about Altean circadian rhythms.

“Settle down, everyone, settle down!” Coran claps his hands to get their attention. “We’ve only got seventy-five more _quintets_ before Coronation Day and we’ll need all of them to get you lot in shape!” He points to Shiro. “Pop quiz! Number One, list the first part of the coronation ceremony!”

“The Procession,” he supplies. Coran’s finger moves to Hunk.

“Uh, then the Oath, right?”

Lance yawns, “Next is the Vest—the Unvest—the Vestifying—the thing with the armor and the spear and that really old shield.”

“He means the Investing,” Keith helps. “The Crowning comes after that.”

Pidge finishes with, “Then Allura stands up, there’s a million speeches, we all go party and go home. Great meeting, Coran, loved it, thanks, goodnight—”

“Nice try, Number Five,” Coran says, steering her back onto the couch, “but we’re not done yet. The Homage, or those ‘million speeches,’ is the most important part of the ceremony for you Paladins. Each of you will have to declare your loyalty to the Princess, and you’ll have to do it perfectly. You’ll also have to do it after your squishy human bodies have been standing at attention for a good two _vargas_ , which historically has not put you at your highest performance level.”

He opens a large clock on a holoscreen. “That’s why we’re starting practice now. If you can memorize your declaration speech and recite it correctly before power-up, you’ll prove that you can do it on Coronation Day.”

There’s a chorus of groans. Coran only smirks.

“I thought you’d say as much. So I’m prepared to increase the stakes: the Paladin with the best delivery will win a few more _vargas_ of beauty sleep and have permission to skip this morning’s drills.”

All five of them jolt upright. Coran chuckles.

“Excellent! Let’s begin, shall we? Watch closely.” Flicking the clock to the side, he opens another holoscreen. As soon as the video loads, Shiro recognizes it: it’s more footage from Alfor’s coronation, like the clip Allura first played for him. In Coran’s selection, the King is fully inside the temple now, dressed in heavy silver armor atop his gold robes and decorated with the Three Sisters. He waits at the edge of the altar as a knight approaches, ascending the altar steps in slow, precise strides.

"Wait a second—" Pidge clambers over Lance's legs to get a better view of the screen, squinting behind her glasses. "Is it me, or does that knight look like an Allura clone?"

"Pidge!" Coran scolds. "Altean cloning was outlawed by the Supreme Council of Scientific Ethics way back in 77369! That's just Lady Vassa, the Princess' mother."

"Whoa!" Hunk ignores Lance's second yelp of pain as he too scrambles over him to join Pidge at the front. "That's the Queen?"

"The First Consort." Coran rewinds the video and zooms in, bringing the woman into focus. "Only the sovereign may be called a king or queen. Their partners take the title 'consort.'"

Shiro studies the woman as she takes one knee before King Alfor, bowing her head. Allura does look remarkably like her; she has the same full lips, high cheekbones, and wide, round nose. Lady Vassa’s skin is darker than her daughter's, however, and upon closer inspection her hair appears to be a pale shade of lavender instead of silver-white. It falls down her back in long trails of tight braids, studded with beads and glittering gems. Her suit of armor is even heavier than the King's.

“Was she a Paladin?” asks Shiro, curious.

“King Alfor was in favor of her becoming one, but she wasn’t chosen by the Lions. Vassa preferred to fight on the ground, anyway. She was famous for leading a counterstrike against an invading Jukonian army on the Carasis colony about two years prior. It earned her the Royal Medal of Honor.” Coran smiles, watching her begin her declaration speech. “That’s how she met the King.”

Lance whistles. “Damn! She came for the appetizers and stayed for the main course, eh?”

“I just said she came for the Medal of Honor, not a dinner.” Coran shakes his head. “Honestly, Lance.”

“Why haven’t we heard of her?” Hunk asks. “I didn’t even know Allura _had_ a mom. She’s never mentioned her before.”

“Why would she? It could be a personal thing. Pidge never talked about her family much before we rescued them,” Keith counters.

“Yeah, but I was fifteen and moody and off my hormones thanks to my Garrison infiltration stunt.” Pidge stretches her arms over her head, yawning. “I wouldn’t have told you guys my favorite color if you put a blaster to my head, let alone shared my feelings on my parents. Still,” she considers, “it _is_ a little weird that two of my five friends have dropped surprise alien moms on me.”

“Hey,” says Lance, throwing an arm around Keith’s shoulders, “at least in Keith’s case, it was a surprise for him, too!”

Keith rolls his eyes. “Can we just finish this and get back to bed?”

“Now,” Coran continues, “after your declaration, the next part gets a little tricky. Once you declare your loyalty, the Princess will put you to a test. No, no, that kind of test,” he reassures a wailing Lance. “In fact, I believe the younger Dr. Holt told me some of your Earth kingdoms had a similar tradition to dub a knight! The Princess will simply take a sword, raise it, and attempt to kill you with it.”

Pidge is the one to break the dumbstruck silence.

“Uh, Coran,” she says, “I don’t think that was the tradition Matt was talking about. Dubbing a knight on Earth—in pretty much every place on Earth, I think—doesn’t involve fighting the king to death.”

“Oh, there’s no fight! That’s the test!” Coran points to the video. “Your loyalty is proven if you remain still.”

Sure enough, Lady Vassa remains kneeling as King Alfor is handed a sword by an attendant and sharpens it on a rough stone held by another. Then, taking the hilt in both hands, he raises it in a battle stance. In one smooth motion he sweeps it over his head and down.

Vassa doesn’t move a muscle. The blade stops a hair’s width from her neck.

Alfor holds there for a moment before pulling away. When Vassa stands up, he kisses her lightly on both cheeks before she turns and descends the stairs. The next noble in line moves forward to take her place. Coran stops the footage there and walks around the couch to stand before them, crossing his arms behind his back.

“When you pay homage to the Princess, you declare that you trust her with the kingdom,” he says. “If you trust her with the kingdom, then you trust her with your life. And if you trust her with your life, then you trust that she will pull her strike.” He looks around. “Who wants to go first?”

“Come on, guys,” Shiro says, trying for an encouraging tone. “How hard can it be?”

The answer is “very hard.” When the Castle sounds the power-up chime, Coran tugs at his mustache and sighs.

“Though you’ve all failed miserably, fair is fair. I’m going to split the prize between Number Two and Number Four. Hunk, you screamed every time I swung the rolling pin, but you got your speech right in one go. Keith, you couldn’t get a single sentence in order, but after the third try you didn’t flinch at all. Both of you have the morning off.”

The two of them wave merrily as they head back to their rooms, ignoring the twin middle fingers both Pidge and Lance throw their way.

“You three, on the other hand, need some work. Number Five, I know you’re the shortest, but you’re still not allowed to duck. Number Three, don’t recite the declaration so dramatically; this is a coronation, not the opera! And Number One, remember, you can’t fight back.” He raises an eyebrow at Shiro, pointing at the splintered end of the rolling pin.

“Sorry,” Shiro says sheepishly. “I’ll do better next time.”

“I should hope so.” Coran tosses the rolling pin to him and opens the power-up controls. “It’ll be a very messy coronation otherwise.”

 

* * *

 

That night, Shiro dreams of the Colosseum.

Unlike his usual dreams of the past, packed into the seats are not jeering Galra but the judges of the Apeiron Court, flickering in and out of sight as they wave their cloaking devices in the air like flags. He stands in the center in full Voltron armor, his bayard in his left hand and his right arm bright and burning.

In front of him is Allura. The Three Sisters are wrapped around her in gold chains as thick as ropes, draped in knots from her neck to her ankles. She’s two steps ahead, one step to the left, just where she should be, and looks straight ahead like they practiced. He can see the corner of her mouth move to speak.

A shot rings out—a blaster gun fired from somewhere in the crowd. Allura’s mouth falls open, slack, as the chains tighten around her. They clatter as she plummets to the ground, the bright stones knocked loose from their settings. As they roll to his feet they burst into stars.

He watches the scene play over and over like a corrupted vid. He can’t find the source of the shot and can’t reach Allura in time to catch her. He’s always stuck too far away.

When he wakes, there are still four more hours until power-up. He spends all of them in the training room.

The next time Coran summons them for another practice session, Shiro does even worse. In the morning he completes his drills in half his usual time so that he can use his free hour to nap in the lounge. He has the dream again; this time, he’s kneeling as he watches Allura fall, unable to move a finger. He wakes in a cold sweat.

After dinner, he practices his speech in the mirror until his voice is hoarse. Coran calls him in again close to power-down and he can barely get through the first sentence. The rolling pin is in splinters with ten minutes.

He promises to relax. The dream comes again. He flicks on his room lights and writes the speech over and over and over until the words and letters have no sound anymore, no meaning. They stick to the roof of his mouth and clog his throat. He thinks of the flash of steel, the whistle of a blade cutting through the air, and jumps before Coran has even raised his arm.

He’s tired. He goes through drills by rote, walks himself to his hanger and starts up the Black Lion before his brain can catch up. His left hand is becoming painfully calloused from the grips on the weight machines. He’s tired. He’s so tired. He dreams and he dreams and he can’t open his mouth.

After two weeks, Allura nudges him awake during a Ularese poetry convocation.

“Sorry,” he grunts, blinking slowly as his eyes adjust to the light. “Is the break starting now? I’ll walk you to the washrooms.”

“The entire convocation is over. We already had the break, and you took me there,” she reminds him. “We have to meet the shuttle and then reconvene with the Castle in order to have time to prep for the Ffiffian peace summit tomorrow.”

“Right.” Shiro stands, wincing as he rolls his sore shoulders. “After you, Princess.”

The shuttle is waiting for them by the time they arrive at the docking bay. Once they lift off, Allura immediately opens a holoscreen and begins working. The speed of her hands dancing in and out of the light is hypnotizing and soothing—combined with the low hum of the shuttle engines, he can feel himself beginning to drift off again.

Allura clears her throat, startling him out of his almost-nap. When he opens his eyes, she’s giving him a discerning look.

“I don’t mean to nag,” she says, “but you seem less attentive than usual at these events. Is something wrong?”

“Just tired from all this coronation training, that’s all.” He tries to sound less groggy. Judging by Allura’s expression, he doesn’t succeed.

“Tell me about it,” she says drily. “But the other Paladins came to me with some concerns. According to them, you’ve been operating below peak performance lately, and it’s not going well for the team. They seem to fear that you’ll work them to death, or throw your back out from all of your Distraction Pullups.”

Shiro blinks. “Di—distraction pullups?”

“To quote Hunk, I believe it’s ‘Shiro’s crazy, over-the-top, middle-of-the-night exercise routine that he does on the training deck when he thinks we’re all asleep, to distract himself from whatever he doesn’t want to talk about.’” She quirks an eyebrow. “Does that sound accurate?”

“I wouldn’t call it ‘crazy,’” he grumbles.

“Then what’s keeping you up?”

“It’s—it’s a lot of things,” he says. “Little things that add up. But don’t worry,” he insists when her hands start to lower from the keys. “I’ll get over it.”

She groans. “Would you stop trying to lie to me? It’s gotten very old, Shiro, because it never works. Tell me what your problem is so that you don't make worse!”

“Fine,” he snaps. “I can’t do the Homage. I can’t make my declaration and it’s driving me nuts.”

“Why?” Allura puts her hands on her hips. “Are you having trouble with the speech, because you still have time to keep practicing—”

“I’m having trouble with _everything_ , because I can’t _do_ any of it.” He counts off on his fingers, “I can’t concentrate when I’m facing a crowd. I can’t speak well when I know people are watching me. I can’t kneel in front of you, put my head down, and let myself be attacked without trying to stop the blade. And I can’t go up there and try anyway because if I screw this up, I disappoint everyone.” He stops to catch his breath. “Most of all, you.”

Allura closes her holoscreen.

“Kneel, please,” she says.

“What?”

“Kneel.” She points to her feet. “Here.”

“But—why?”

Allura rolls her eyes. “Do I have to make it an order?”

With some reluctance, he obeys. Once he’s situated, Allura steps forward, rummaging in her sleeve for a moment. Before he can ask what her plan is, something cold presses against the left side of his neck, just below his jaw.

“Whoa, what’s tha—” He tries to move away, but Allura’s hand shoots out and catches his other cheek. Her thumb presses against his temple, holding his head steady. He stills. The cold thing shifts slightly against his skin, changing from smooth to sharp. Almost like—like a—

“You were carrying a knife?” he sputters. “At a poetry convocation? Why? How? _Where?_ ”

“Because I refuse to be unarmed at any event after that first Apeiron Court mess; by making conversation with the guard captain so that he was so preoccupied with showing me pictures of his twin hatchlings that he forgot to scan me; and up my sleeve, like any proper Altean lady,” Allura answers. “But it looks like even my assassins can’t bear Ularese sonnets, so it was all for naught. Now, start reciting.”

“Princess, I know in some strange way you’re trying to help me.” He tries to twist away again, but Allura’s hands may as well be iron. “Believe me when I say this won’t work.”

“Why not?” She tilts her head, curls swinging as they slide over her shoulders. “This is what you’re afraid of, isn’t it? Making a mistake and being hurt for it?”

His throat feels thick as he answers, “There’s much more, but that’s the gist of it.”

Allura’s hand is warm against his cheek, almost warm enough to take his thoughts away from the blade on the other side of his face. Gently, she tilts up his chin.

“Shiro, even if you gave the worst declaration speech in the world, I would never punish you for it,” she says. “It’s just pageantry, a symbol. A practice round, not a real fight. You’re safe.” She turns the knife again, shifting the cutting edge away so that it doesn’t hurt when she presses it against his skin. “Close your eyes. Center yourself. When you’re ready, begin.”

He can’t think of how to argue his way out of this. He’s exhausted, and nervous, and Allura’s lace cuffs itch where they brush his neck. So he does as she commands.

He gets through the entire speech without a single mistake.

When he opens his eyes, Allura looks smug. She flicks the knife closed and tucks it back into her sleeve. When she steps back, his cheek is cool where her hand lay.

“Perfect,” she says.

That night, when the dream ends he rises immediately and fumbles for the alarm clock. The face reads just past 0400. He shakes off the sheets and pulls on socks to reduce the shock of the metal floor against his bare feet.

His hangar is dark, with only the emergency lights to guide him through the security doors. Black blinks slowly when he climbs in, her questioning hum low and groggy.

“Don’t bother starting up, girl,” he says, shutting down the systems before they’re fully loaded. “I’m just here for a cat nap.”

A growl. Shiro laughs.

“Sorry, sorry. Couldn’t resist.” He fiddles with the seat buttons until the pilot’s chair reclines. “Did I ever tell you I used to study in my cruiser cockpit? I read some article in bootcamp about how the room you work in affects your brain. I thought that if I ate, slept, and breathed piloting, I’d graduate at the top of my class.” He kicks his feet up onto the dashboard. “I did, but it was only after my favorite professor told me to stop sleeping on the cruiser floor. Don’t think my neck has ever recovered, honestly.”

The lights in the cockpit dim to a dull lavender. Another curious hum. This time Shiro feels it more than hears it; already his mind is drifting away, nestling into his Lion’s like being wrapped in an old, familiar blanket.

“Can’t sleep in my room, and can’t stay awake on the training deck,” he answers with a yawn. “Now our boss says I have to find some third option. D’you mind if I stay here tonight?”

His Lion purrs, low and warm. It’s as good a yes as any. He leans back in the chair and closes his eyes. His last coherent thought is that his neck is going to pay for this in the morning.

Dreams are different inside the Lions. His mind is filled with only memories, scenes shifting in and out like waves in a tidepool. He’s eighteen and cramming in the Garrison library during finals week. He’s twenty-three and playing some kind of alien poker with two other gladiators through their cell bars. He’s thirty and Allura holds a knife to his neck and tells him he’s safe, yet he feels desperation gnaw at him only after she’s taken her hands away.

 _Desperate for what?_ he wonders.

 _Sleep,_ Black growls, and once again Shiro submits to someone else’s orders.

 

* * *

 

“Are they really that heavy?” he asks Allura one day. She’s taken to wearing the Three Sisters around the Castle when she doesn’t have to make public appearances. She’s still slightly embarrassed to be seen wearing them, though, so she carries the jewlery in a plain cloth sack, donning it in the teluvac control room when no one else is around.

“See for yourself,” Allura says, and without warning plops the Star of Abiza onto his head.

“Oh my god,” Shiro says. “This is—I have to be breaking dozens of your laws right now, maybe hundreds?”

“Calm down,” she laughs. “How could you break the law if the queen was the one who put it on you? I’m the ‘Most Fair Judge of All Under the Heavens.’ I _am_ the law. Try walking around a bit.”

He does. It’s a challenge to keep his head straight and to look up at the same time, for the crown is just slightly too wide for him. It keeps trying to slip down to his ears. If he were to guess, it must weigh at least twenty pounds.

“I don’t know what a ‘pound’ is, but it weighs thirty-seven and a half _errols_.” She takes off the Star of Amara, weighing it in her hand. “The ring is four, and the necklace is near seventy. It used to be even heavier, but my father had some of settings redone after my mother complained. She had to wear it at state ceremonies and she always hated it.”

Shiro removes the crown carefully, freeing his head. “You don't talk about your mother very often,” he says.

“I have fewer memories of her.” Allura twists a lock of hair between her fingers pensively. “She disliked the cattiness of court, so she lived away from the capital. My father and I would visit her now and again, but less often as I got older. That was common on Atlea; all the nobles had arranged marriages. My parents cared for each other, but they were content enough to live apart.”

A pause. Shiro clears his throat before asking, softly, “Did she die in the war?”

“No.” Allura fingers the necklace again, running her fingers along the chains. “She was very involved in the military. She was supervising a bootcamp on one of our colonies—a remote, mountainous place. During a training exercise there was a landslide. She pushed a cadet’s cruiser out of the way and endangered herself instead. I was still very young. Unlike my father’s death, I had time to grieve her.” She smiles. “He used to say that there would be no war if my mother had a say in it. She could argue down anyone, even Zarkon.”

She comes to reclaim the Star of Abiza, and Shiro holds it out for her to take. But Allura dips her head expectantly, the top of her head angled just so.

He hesitates before slowly placing the crown there. It fits her much better, for her hair is much thicker. Though he does his best, he still manages to get several curls tangled around one of the fastenings. He’s about to reach out and smooth them away when she raises her head again. His hand hovers in midair for a split-second before he steps away, tucking it behind his back. Allura straightens the crown on her head, adjusting how it lies. He can’t tell if she noticed his strange movement or not.

“There we are,” she says, satisfied. “No laws broken and no harm done!”

Shiro nods, and they return to their business. He keeps his hands away, controlled, contained.

 

* * *

 

It’s been so long since the emergency alarms last sounded that it takes Shiro a second to remember what they mean. The end of the war was a series of long-planned battles, all plotted down to the last detail and executed at lightning speed. The Galran Empire didn’t surprise them anymore—the rebellion had finally wrested the upper hand and used it to their every advantage. As he and Allura rush to the bridge, they have to weave through others trickling into the halls, worried and confused by the blaring sirens and flashing lights.

“What’s going on?” Allura asks the head navigator, hurrying in front of the helm to shut off the sirens and look through the status report. “Are we under attack?”

“No, ma’am. A distress signal came through the Peace Guard outpost on Epsilon-04, sent with a Level 1 priority.” The navigator opens the holomap, showing a green dwarf planet near the massive Beniman Asteroid Belt. “They relayed this message.”

Allura opens the file. Immediately, a booming voice fills the room.

 _“MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY! THIS IS THE MADEERA, MADEERA, MADEE————CALL SIGN OH-NINER-THR———MAYDAY, THIS IS———————ZERO-POINT-THREE RANZONS FROM THE SYSTEM—————REQUESTING AID FRO————HULL BREACHED AND ATTACKED, DO NOT S———————WE’RE A CRUISE LINER WITH FIVE THOUSAND PASSENGERS, THERE ARE CHILDREN ABOARD, WE NEED———I REPEAT, DO NOT SEND—————OVER!”_

The message is punctuated with bursts of screeching static that drown out entire sections. Allura plays it again, frowning.

“We received several signals, but this was the best quality I could find,” the navigator apologizes, her rabbit-like ears drooping. “I managed to piece together their location from several clips. The outpost said that they’ve been monitoring the line, but the calls have stopped. The 48th Fleet is patrolling one system over, but if this ship needs to evacuate they don’t have the capacity to take even one-fifth of that number.” She expands the map, showing Allura the marked positions. “Princess, what are your orders?”

Allura turns to the resources officer. “Lieutenant Grane, what’s the Castle’s full carrying capacity? Could we do it?”

“Our barracks are full up with four thousand recruits, but if we’re talking sheer floor space?” They bite their lip, doing some rapid calculations on the console. “We could fit seven thousand with very limited comfort. Nine thousand total would be a very tight squeeze. We’d be out of food and water within a day unless we docked at Terranni Prime before warping to the Madeera’s port of origin, and the extra weight might affect everything from the fuel usage and oxygen supply to the effects of the artificial gravity.”

“You answered my first question, Lieutenant,” Allura says, “but could we do it?”

The lieutenant looks at the list of numbers, pained.

“Yes, ma’am,” they say. “We could.”

Allura nods, and activates the wormhole chargers. Shiro hurries to his seat.

“Then my orders are: full speed ahead.”

 

* * *

 

When they reach the coordinates, he’s forced to amend his belief that finding a stranded five-thousand-passenger cruise liner would be easy. The Castle exits the wormhole and immediately has to pull into a dive to avoid the planet-size asteroid in their path. Once they’re safely out of range, Shiro looks through the bridge windows and feels his stomach sink.

They’ve arrived at the very center of the Beniman Asteroid Belt, and there's nothing but gray in sight.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Allura orders. “I’m going to take us through slowly. Keith, Lance, send out the drones and see if they can pick up the distress signal again. Coran, mark off each section of the Belt we search so that we don’t go in circles. Understood?” A chorus of ‘aye-aye’s echoes around the bridge.

It feels like hours. Flying through the Beniman Belt is akin to floating through an endless rocky sea. Shiro’s head is swimming as he stares into the constantly-shifting maze of miles-long asteroids. There’s no glimpse of the cool, dark expanse of space in sight, and no sign of any other ship.

“I still can’t pick up a signal,” Pidge says, rubbing at her eyes. “I think the asteroids are so big that they’re scrambling whatever wavelength the Madeera is trying to send. The moment any of them move, it scrambles it in a whole different way.”

“Keep looking,” Allura says. “If the ship’s hull was punctured, we just need to find the trail of debris and follow it to the source. Scan for traces of any artificial element in here.”

Pidge runs the scanner. They keep going. Coran ticks off their coordinates in red, slowly coloring the holomap in thin slices. A few officers leave the bridge to fetch water from the mess hall; people are starting to feel dizzy. Shiro’s palms are slick with sweat as the Castle moves in rocking starts and stops, avoiding more than one collision by a hair.

And then—

“There!”

Lance hurries to load his drone’s camera onto the main screen. Everyone cheers as the image fills the room: a massive cruise liner slumped against one asteroid, its thousands of windows glimmering like jeweled scales. There’s a sizable hole in the hull, but the emergency lights are still flashing, meaning the power lines weren’t damaged. There’s a good chance everyone could still be alive.

“Madeera, this is the Castle of Lions,” Allura says into the comm. “We have received your distress signal and are locked on your location, ready to evacuate. Please report the extent of the damage and the status of your passengers.”

Nothing. Allura reactivates the comm and tries again.

“Madeera, this is the Castle of Lions. Are you receiving?”

_“Princess Allura. We knew we could count on you.”_

There’s an immediate rush of relief, even a few bits of applause at the response. Allura breathes a heavy sigh. But Shiro doesn’t join the celebration. The voice that responds is nothing like the voice that crackled through the static of the distress signal. This speaker sounds much calmer than the officer who first asked for help, almost eerily so.

“We are happy to assist, Madeera. What is your status?”

 _“I’m glad you asked, Princess. I think it’d be better to show, not tell.”_ A request for an incoming transmission appears. Pidge accepts, and a video feed loads.

It’s an enormous open room, probably a ballroom on the cruise ship’s passenger deck. Uniformed crew members are positioned around the perimeter. At the very end there’s a large tank, glowing faintly, but what’s inside is hard to make out from the moving shape on the ballroom floor.

Shiro stands up slowly as he realizes it’s not a shape. It’s far more than one.

It’s all five thousand of the Madeera’s passengers sitting cross-legged on the floor, cuffed together.

The camera turns shakily, focusing on a figure in the foreground now. They’re also wearing a crew uniform, but their face is covered with a light shield. One arm is slung around the neck of a portly alien wearing a captain’s hat. The other is holding a charged blaster to their neck.

 _“I want to apologize for the sloppy job a few months ago,”_ the voice behind the camera says. _“One of our younger members was too impatient. He ignored our orders and took it upon himself to attempt a coup of his own, and you’re well aware of how that turned out for him. I want you to know that he doesn’t represent us. We’re far above taking a cheap shot at you in front of a crowd.”_

Allura’s hand clench around the edge of her console.

“What,” she growls, “are your terms.”

 _“Nothing more than a simple trade, Your Highness. Your life for theirs.”_ The camera turn backs to the hostages. _“Five thousand for one is a hard deal to pass up, I’d say. But if you do—”_ the frame zooms in on the tank in the distance, now clearly visible as the ship's re-rigged fuel pod, _“—then the Madeera’s last voyage will end with a bang._

 _“We’ll set the clock. Take a shuttle, unarmed, no guards. When you reach our envoy, we’ll release the magnetic anchor and let the ship drift to yours, all heads and limbs intact. If your soldiers fire a single shot at us, well,”_ the camera focuses on the frightened families clustered on the ballroom floor, _“things will get very interesting._

_“The envoy is assembling now. Thank you, Princess, for coming to our aid. Vrepit sa.”_

The feed cuts off, and a timer appears on the holoscreen. Ten minutes.

Allura steps away from the helm.

“To the Lions,” she says. "Now.”

 

* * *

 

Their orders are to stay in a line formation, mimicking the long row of fighters flanking the Madeera. The small ships emerged from their hiding spots as soon as the message ended, flitting around the asteroids as if to mock them. Once the Madeera is within range, the Lions will push it towards the Castle to connect the airlocks and begin the evacuation.

“Do not break formation until the cruise ship is out of their firing range,” orders Allura over the comm, rapidly preparing the Castle for the complexities of a boarding procedure with limited room to fit two massive ships hull-to-hull. “Our first priority is the rescue of the passengers. I, and only I, will make the call on if and when to attack. If any of you so much as breathe on the trigger before the last person is off of that ship, I will demote you to deckhand faster than a flying _hal’quin_.”

“But Allura,” Hunk says, his hands tight around Yellow’s steering controls, “what’re you going to do? Unloading five thousand people could take hours! What if these guys fly away with you before we can get there, or start attacking once you dock, or just blow up your shuttle the second it leaves the Castle—”

“I'll be fine, Hunk,” she says. “Stick to the plan and wait for my signal.” With the snap of her fingers, she cuts off her line.

“We can’t do this,” Keith says, gritting his teeth. “ _She_ can’t do this. We have to call in reinforcements, or retreat, or just go in and do _something!_ ”

“Our outbound signal is still being broken up by the Belt, just like the Madeera’s distress signal was.” Shiro himself is white-knuckled at the wheel. His whole body feels tense and cold, frozen with dread. “Help might not come in time. If they blow the other ship, the explosion will set off a chain reaction that’ll rock every asteroid around us. The Castle will be crushed flat. We have our orders. We have to follow them.”

“Shiro,” says Pidge quietly, “we just can’t watch her die.”

He doesn’t answer.

Not a second after the timer ends, Allura’s shuttle emerges from the Castle dock. One of the fighters breaks away from the pack and hovers ahead of the others, halfway between the Castle and the anchored Madeera. They all watch as she drifts slowly toward the meeting point, coasting carefully around a few smaller asteroids that drift into her path.

His console beeps: an incoming line. He accepts.

 _“You have to trust me.”_ She didn’t turn on the vid comm, only audio. His stomach twists just hearing her voice. _“They won’t be able to get far. I’ve scanned their ships and none of them even have a warp. They’re not going to execute me here. It’s not pretty for them, not impressive enough. They want to make a spectacle of it. There’s a base somewhere, I’m sure, and if we chase them down we’ll be able to find it.”_

“That’s guesswork,” he argues. “They could have a larger plan, or they could just want you dead.”

 _“Shiro,”_ she pleads, _“don’t break formation. Five thousand people, I can’t—I can’t witness another massacre.”_

Her shuttle is mere leagues away from the envoy. The brake jets flare up, slowing Allura down. The envoy moves forward. As it does, he notices a long, pronged gun, glowing and charged on its underside.

There’s one last “ _Shiro, don’t—_ ” before the line cuts to static.

He breaks away at once. He takes aim at the envoy ship and fires.

Hundreds of blasts sound as more fighters emerge and swarm him. He guns them down in droves, crashing against debris and asteroids as everything is sent into frantic motion. The Castle, the Lions, the Madeera drift in and out of his vision as the asteroids spin and collide, an ever-changing deadly maze.

The fighters seem endless, a cloud of silver locusts flitting between asteroids as if they were nothing more than air. He loses track of how many he shoots down—ten, twenty, fifty?—as Black’s screens flash red, warning signs for power and cabin pressure blaring in his ears, the glass splintering from one collision after another, but he holds tight to the helm and fires into the storm, fires and fires and fires—

He runs out of fuel at the same moment Hunk smashes through the asteroid beneath him, the Yellow Lion roaring as it clears a big enough gap for Lance and Blue to swoop through, grab Black by a wing, and _fly_.

“Looks like the cub has become the king!” Lance’s voice booms through the comm. He still flies as wildly now as he did on his first day in the cockpit, and the whirling chunks of metal and rock debris aren’t making the ride any smoother. Shiro grips the arms of his chair to keep himself in the seat, clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from rattling. “You alright, Shiro?”

“Never better,” Shiro coughs, grappling for the switch on his helmet that will extend the visor over his lower jaw and begin the flow of oxygen. Black grumbles, the tremor going through his bones. _Dumb kid_ , it feels like. He pats the dashboard apologetically.

“Great!” Lance says. “Now, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that thanks to Pidge and Keith's incredible aim, all Madeera passengers are accounted for and being loaded onto the Castle as we speak! We took a crapload of damage, but we’ll limp out of here okay.”

“That’s great,” Shiro says. “And the bad news?”

“During the fight, some of these jerks managed to get away. We couldn’t lock onto their signal before they escaped. If the Castle was at full power we could track them, but chances are they’ll be long gone by the time we’ll be able to give chase. Oh, and uh, one more thing.” Lance turns to face the camera and gives him an apologetic look. “Allura said she wanted to see you as soon as we dock. And she sounded like she wanted to kill you.”

 

* * *

 

By the time he docks the Black Lion back inside the Castle, the entire ship is busy trying to pull itself out of chaos. There are at least four alarms blaring with different sets of strobing lights to match. Peace Guard soldiers are running through the bays in every direction like a swarm of bees as they make repairs, turn off nonessential power systems, get the shields up and ready so that they can wormhole out of here in one piece. Dazed Madeera passengers are still filing in, being directed to the largest areas in the Castle to save as much space as possible.

“Have you seen the Princess?” he asks a passing Digodi engineer, but she only shakes her head and hurries back to the fuel room.

On the bridge, Coran claims he sent her to the medbay so that she could rest enough for the upcoming jump. At the medbay, an Arusian doctor reports that she consented to only be treated with gro-gel before heading to the power crystals. At the power crystals, Hunk sighs and says, “You know what happens when she tries to fix them without any energy.”

He doesn’t bother checking anywhere else after that. He takes the winding route through the barracks to arrive at that empty stretch of wall. He knows the passcode by heart now.

Allura is standing in front of the window. She’s facing the door as if she’s been expecting him this whole time. The overhead lights are off; the King’s Closet is lit only by the Xixxir Nebula slowly churning at her back, filling the room with a warm orange glow. It shines through the cloud of frizz unspooling from her bun like a fiery halo.

“You disobeyed me,” she says.

For the first time ever, Shiro can’t read her expression. Her face is as cold and smooth as stone. There’s a cut on her jaw that must be the injury the Arusian treated. It curves up into a half-moon shape near the corner of her mouth. It’s impossible to know how deep it was before the gro-gel stitched it closed, but there’s a stain of dark blood dried on her collar. Shiro tears his eyes away from it.

“I did,” he affirms.

“You have no regrets about doing so.”

“I don’t.”

“You would do it again if you thought it would save my life, even at the expense of your own, or someone else's.”

“I would.”

“Why,” she demands, “did you agree to be my _yluriel_ if you have so little faith in my judgment?”

She’s angry then. Fine. Shiro can handle angry. He can _be_ angry too _—_ has a right to be, even, because he disobeyed her only after she made yet another reckless choice. He has a right to make himself stone too, to be immovable, and they can both stand here like columns competing to see who will be the last to erode grain by grain. He wraps his left hand around his right arm, his fingers brushing against the marks her hand left months ago.

“I agreed because I have every faith in your judgment,” he says. “You’re going to build a future that will outshine ten thousand years of terror and pain. But you have to live another two months to do that, and your judgement decided I was the one to make that happen.”

It’s a struggle to keep his voice as even and cold as hers. It feels like they’re both keeping their hands over a candle flame, trying not to let it burn too high.

“You thought you were just giving me a job, but _you_ are the job, Princess. To protect you is to protect everything. I’d disobey any orders that got in the way of that, whatever the cost. I told you before: I’d follow you into hell.”

Allura turns away.

“A _yluriel_ ,” she says, “is not supposed to go that far.”

“I know. Just up some steps.” He can feel the tiny dent of her forefinger under his thumb. “But that’s the same thing.”

Slowly, she turns to face him again. When he catches her gaze, her eyes are glowing like embers, like two opalescent stars in the night.

It takes her only four steps to cross the room and kiss him.

It is everything and nothing like he’d imagined. Her hands are everywhere, gripping his shoulders, his hair, his neck, one tugging at the edge of his chest plate and the other braced on his hip. She presses her tongue to his and bites at what little skin on his neck his armor doesn’t cover. The flame they tried to keep steady is being fanned into a blaze and he can feel it in the scalding heat of her mouth, in the sharpness of her teeth. He wraps his arms around her waist as tight as he can and still it feels like he can only barely contain her. And he can’t. He doesn’t want to.

It is everything and nothing like he’d imagined, and Shiro can’t remember when he started imagining this. It’s like a fog has been lifted, a veil pulled back, a door opened in a wall that he’s always walked past, never realizing there was something on the other side. But he’s seen it now, and he’s stepped through. _You can’t go back the way you came_ , a part of him warns. But another part says, _You don’t want to go back_. Both are true and both are terrifying.

Shiro’s sick of being terrified. For now, for one moment, he wants to focus on one true thing: Allura. Allura, here, with him.

They kiss and kiss and that fire builds in his gut, spilling through his blood and down his spine. By reflex he pulls Allura closer. One of her legs catches between his and he startles, panting against her cheek. For a split second she looks surprised. Immediately his head reels with panic.

_She doesn’t know what—I don’t know how to—we’re too different and we can’t start this now and we’ll never, ever be able to—_

His thoughts quiet when Allura kisses him again, more gently than before. Slowly, deliberately, she presses her leg between his thighs and keeps it there. She chases the sharp breath he takes, following it down the line of his throat. She hums lightly against his collarbone as she rocks again, and again, while Shiro’s heart pounds so hard he feels like it may break through his chest, armor and all. They’ve stumbled back against her glass desk. He reaches back to grab the edge, afraid he might lose his footing if he doesn’t.

They don’t undress, don’t even bother trying. It happens like this: Allura breathes in, her chest rising and falling against his. She pulls back, one hand still pressed against his hip. She says, “Show me what to do.”

He swallows. Then he takes her hand and shows her.

It doesn’t take very long. She stops once, worried that his low grown means she’s made a mistake, but he shakes his head and covers her fingers with his own. If it were any other time, any other person, he would’ve been embarrassed to come so fast, but with Allura he can’t bring himself to care about anything more than the burn of her mouth, the slide of her hand. He muffles his shout into the curve of her shoulder and it’s done.

They stand there for a moment, leaning against each other, the pounding in his chest gradually slowing. Then she steps away, flexing her hand once before tucking a strand of hair back behind her ear. The silence between them is deafening.

“I’m needed on the bridge,” Allura says, her voice crisp and even. “Await further instructions for the wormhole jump and our regroup with the 48th Fleet.”

The door hisses closed, cutting off the sound of her boots marching down the hall at a tempo more even than a drumbeat. Shiro closes his eyes and doesn’t open them. He doesn’t move at all until the comm sounds the call to assemble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relevant links for your perusal:  
> \- The first quote is taken from [this amazing article](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge) on the UK's emergency-but-not-emergency plans for the future death of the Queen. It's a really fascinating look at how much government and culture can still revolve around a monarchy even when said monarchy no longer has a lot of political power. 
> 
> \- The entirety of Elizabeth I's "Golden Speech" can be read [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Speech)
> 
> \- Because this is heavily, heeeeavily based on The Crown as I've said before, the Altean coronation system is a slightly-altered version of the British ceremony. You can [read through the actual ceremonial instructions for Elizabeth II's ceremony in 1953,](http://www.oremus.org/liturgy/coronation/cor1953b.html) and also [watch it on YouTube,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ssh8NEltCac) as it was the first time a British coronation was shown live on tv! Check out all the amazing clothes and carriages!
> 
> \- I pictured the Three Sisters stones looking somewhat like [this](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/91/2c/c1/912cc16801ad293426d8cce4699b07f6.jpg)
> 
> \- If you know anything about me at all, you know that I have to insert at least one Jodhaa Akbar reference into everything I touch. This time it went into [inspiration for the Star of Allura](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z4s2spPlmAM/TyUOmsBYY_I/AAAAAAAAC1k/DiMDMoc1iAk/s1600/jodha%2Bakbar%2Bkundan%2Bnecklace.jpg)
> 
> \- In that vein, here is [the Star of Amara](https://img1.etsystatic.com/111/0/11790859/il_570xN.898353301_jym9.jpg) and [the Star of Abiza,](https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/05/6d/7c/57/munich-residence-residenz.jpg) which is an actual queen's crown! (Therese of Bavaria)
> 
> \- My facecast of Allura's mom is [Danai Gurira in this photo](http://cdn03.cdn.justjared.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/erivo-met/cynthia-erivo-danai-gurira-met-gala-2016-10.jpg) of the best Altean Court ~*~Look~*~ I've ever seen
> 
> One final note: it has no bearing whatsoever on this fic, but Pidge is a trans girl. END OF NOTES!!


	3. III

_Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee._  
_The darkness is no darkness with thee, but the night is as clear as day:  
_ _the darkness and the light are to thee both alike._

—Isaiah 26:3, British coronation anthem

 

 

The Madeera turns out to be a godsend, for the work required to return its passengers to port gives Shiro an excuse to avoid Allura for three days.

The Galaxy Garrison had strict rules on fraternization, and Shiro had never been a rule-breaker. He dated casually and infrequently during basic training. He was always careful to avoid being placed in the same company to keep things from getting messy. He broke things off with another pilot when he got the news about the Kerberos selection because the therapists advised them to prepare for the worst, just in case. Maybe it was lucky for his ex that the worst had actually happened.

He wonders what the Garrison’s penalty would be for sleeping with a superior officer, foreign ambassador, international federal judge, and head of a government all rolled in one.

As he helps shuffle the stranded vacationers out of the Castle, Shiro wonders how far he’s going to fall. Allura could strip his rank like she threatened before the fight, bench him from Voltron missions, and send him away solo on some Peace Guard assignment. She could also take away the one thing she’s given him that wasn’t fated by the Lions: his position as _yluriel._ He imagines the relief he’d feel, given leave to walk away from all of this. Yet that relief always morphs into a strange kind of sadness.

 _Because you don’t want this to end_ , says a voice buried deep in his head. _You don’t want her to stop needing you._

When they lift off from Terranni Prime at safe capacity once again, the Castle feels empty by comparison. Without the snores of the fifteen passengers they managed to squeeze into his room the days before, Shiro can once again hear the hum of the engines through the walls and the trickle of the water filtration system in some distant pipe. It’s calming, the ship singing him a familiar mechanical lullaby.

The knock on the door is like a crack of thunder.

“Princess Allura,” he greets her. It’s a safe start, a statement of fact.

“Shiro,” she says. “There’s been a development you must know about.”

Her hands are folded tightly, knuckles sharp like jagged teeth. She looks nervous. The cut on her jaw is still raised but lighter in color than before. In another three days it may vanish entirely, as Altean medicine rarely leaves scars. _I kissed her there,_ Shiro remembers, and stops himself from remembering further.

“The repairs are complete,” she says, “on the Black Lion.”

Shiro blinks. “Oh.” A moment. “Thank you. And Hunk, too.”

She nods. He shifts in the doorway and she shifts in the hall.

“There’s something else. You need to know that I—” she looks down for a moment, “—that I have to be ready to receive the Princes of Cambrium at 0600 tomorrow, so we need to be at the landing dock as early as 0530.” She takes a quick breath. “Is that time acceptable?”

“Yes,” he says, “0530 is fine.”

“Very good. Then we will see each other in the morning.” She dips into one more nod before taking her leave.

 _We._ Shiro thinks about the word for hours after she’s gone. If they’re still a “we,” he’s still _yluriel._ “We” means that nothing will change. With one word, Allura reset their unstable status quo, declared neutrality to avoid the conflict entirely. It’s one of the most brilliant displays of political strategy he’s ever seen from her.

That night is the fourth night he dreams of bright light and warm skin, a blade at his throat and a hand on his hip. He dreams of glass slick under his palm and the tang of blood in his mouth. _You’re desperate,_ she breathes, kissing the scar that streaks across the bridge of his nose, _but desperate for what?_

 

* * *

 

Four weeks left, and the reality of the coronation is finally settling in for everyone. The Castle is transitioning awkwardly from a military base to the universe’s largest event-planning office. Interspersed with Allura’s typical meetings are new appointments with caterers, jewelers, and decorators. An entire wing of weapons storage lockers is emptied and restocked with floral arrangements. It almost feels like they’re planning a very strange, massive wedding.

Shiro wishes it were enough to distract him, but as he troops through banquet halls and bakers’ studios his mind is fixed on one thing: the next attempt on Allura’s life. There will be another, he’s sure, and soon. The Madeera’s assailants did not seem like the kind of people who would give up, even after being thwarted twice. Zarkon, he thinks sickly, would not have tolerated another failure.

He spends more nights in his Lion now than in his bed, but Allura does not give him another lecture about sleep; she’s been doing very little of it herself. She walks with her jaw clenched tight and her hands locked in fists. Once ramrod straight, her spine droops in her chair as she reads through her daily briefs, eyes narrowed and rarely blinking. Even her skin looks duller, as if the color is draining out of her day by day. It’s harder than ever to make her laugh.

Shiro was never very good at that in the first place, but now it may as well be impossible.

They are both trying to act as though nothing has changed, but everything has. They’re not cold, but they’re a far cry from their former friendship. They are cordial and courteous and extremely careful. Allura doesn’t ask for his hand when she has to take the stairs, and Shiro doesn’t lean over to whisper to her during dinners. Most importantly, they are never, ever alone in her office.

Their fragile relationship, the looming coronation, the almost-assassinations—Shiro’s paranoia is climbing towards an all-time high. When Coran calls another emergency meeting early one morning, he’s so anxious that he feels slightly sick.

“In light of recent events, our route will be altered dramatically as we push towards the coronation.” Coran highlights the new map and expands it, surrounding the bridge in curving dotted lines. “To minimize risks, we will only pick up half of the Altean guests we had previously planned for. Their other ships will meet us at Arus itself. The Princess has agreed to cancel most of her major appearances to avoid the largest security gaps, but I couldn’t persuade her to leave out the smaller venues.” He sighs tiredly. “A noble choice, yes, but one that requires us to jump between the three most remote stops on our schedule in the shortest amount of time.”

The computer draws a path between three tiny planets. “Remote” doesn’t cover it—they’re so far apart that the Paladins have to turn their heads to see all of them spread across the room.

“First, we need to wormhole to U’liinan System and check in with the Peace Guard base there. We’ll spend a few days at Garriox getting fuel and last-minute supplies. Then we’ll wormhole again so that the Altean fleet will meet us here, at Themasin-3.” Coran points to the center planet, orbited by a tiny fleet of miniature ships. “After we coordinate with them it’s just a quick jump to Ysildon to attend a conference, and then the Castle will be escorted by several Peace Guard vessels to Arus for the coronation. With any luck, we’ll land there ahead of schedule.” He grunts, rubbing at his chin. “But I doubt it.”

After the officers receive their list of duties, Shiro means to leave to collect Allura, but Coran pulls him aside.

“You’ll have to be very careful around her, Shiro,” he warns. “You know how she gets when she’s stretched too thin.”

Shiro’s stomach drops. _He knows,_ he thinks.

“I—I’m sorry,” he starts, “I know that I shouldn’t have done it, but I slipped and—”

“Easy, easy! It’s alright!” Coran pats him all on the arm. “Don’t beat yourself up over it, Number One. We’ve all made that mistake before!”

Shiro blinks. “Uh, Coran,” he says slowly, “I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing.”

“Oh?” Coran frowns. “I was just referring to the fight you picked with the Princess regarding the Madeera attack. I was just telling you to be careful because all this wormholing is going to exhaust her; she’s always too easy to anger when she’s tired. And being the person most frequently in her personal space, she’s more likely to take it out on you.” He narrows his eyes. “What were _you_ referring to?”

“The same thing,” Shiro lies quickly. “The fight about the Madeera. Sorry, I’m guess I’m pretty tired too.”

Coran pats him on the arm again, more sympathetically now. “Well, like I said, don’t beat yourself up over it. You made a rash decision, but it was the one that saved her life in the end. You’ll just have to wait until she sees it that way. Trust me—I was in your position during her very arduous toddler years.” He chuckles softly. “Besides, six months is a long time to be attached at the hip! I’m sure the two of you are ready to be alone again.”

“Yeah,” Shiro says, looking back at the holomap. The planets twinkle, tied together with the dotted line that leads to Arus, the temple, the very end. “I’ve almost forgotten what that feels like.”

 

* * *

 

Their final push begins with the jump to U’liinan System, a tiny cluster of yellow-green planets orbiting a brilliant blue star like fireflies spinning around a lamp. The Peace Guard is ready and waiting. Speeches are made, drills are run, a thousand bows and salutes and “yes-ma’am”s are performed with ceremony. It’s dull, but it’s safe, and the knot of imminent fear in Shiro’s chest unwinds for a day or two.

They move on to Garriox and spend a whole week counting and recounting food spores and oxygen tanks when an experiment of Pidge’s fries some wire in the main computer that normally does the auto-calculations. Hunk lovingly draws the final tally down Keith’s forehead as they finally come up with the correct number well past 0300. Allura yawns and pets the sleeping mouse on her shoulder, leaving an ink-stained fingerprint behind its ear.

“Feels like the old days, doesn’t it?” she muses. “Just the seven of us, several thousand tubs of green goo, and a very broken battleship drifting through space trying to keep everything from falling apart at an ungodly time of night.”

“If it were really the old days, you’d have orchestrated the whole thing,” Shiro counters. “You ripped out the carbon stabilizers once after curfew just to make us put them back together.”

For a half-second he hears his own words and wants to wince—too informal, too friendly—but Allura snorts, her eyes glinting through her fatigue. 

“I did,” she admits. “But ever since, all of you can fix them in thirty ticks flat.”

She scoops the mouse off of her shoulder and places it on the floor. For a moment it blinks, wondering what has interrupted its nap. But then it scampers forward and jumps up onto the very top of Shiro’s foot, rubbing its paw over its head before curling up to sleep on his boot. He looks at Allura, stricken, but she only presses her hand over her mouth, muffling her laugh. She keeps smirking as he walks her back to her quarters, dragging one leg in a zombie-like gait in order to keep from jostling his passenger.

So it’s not the same, he thinks, but it’s getting better.

Tallies marked, supplies stored, and computer rewired with Pidge-proof circuits, they jump to Themasin-3. The Altean ships greet them as soon as the wormhole has closed, darting around the Castle like a school of silver fish. When the airlocks are secure and the Alteans flood the Castle halls, it feels less like the solemn ceremony that Coran promised and more like the start of a family reunion.

“Allura Alforin!” they cry wherever Allura goes. “Princess, look at you, you’ve grown like a weed since we’ve seen you last!” Young women comb through her hair and pick at the hems of her sleeves, giving opinions on what she should wear for so-and-so’s dinner. Children hang off her heels, begging to play or spar or hear a story. Droopy-faced grandparents pass their hands from left shoulder to right, a salute lost to the ages, and tell Shiro, “My father’s father’s father knew the _tchilluven,_ we are descended from the line of kings. You are honored, boy, to walk where they have walked.”

Poked, prodded, smothered from all sides, Allura has never seemed happier. She advises schoolchildren on their crushes, she calms babies better than their parents, she chatters with old men in languages so ancient that the even the Altean-made biotranslators have trouble piecing them together. She talks until her voice is hoarse, she practices dances with blushing boys half her height to music that Shiro has never heard before. One morning he finds her in Lance’s chair on the bridge with a little girl in her lap, who giggles as the mice chase each other over her knees.

“There he is!” Allura tickles the child to get her attention. “See, the Shadow is here! Go on, ask him your question.”

The girl looks at Shiro with wide, orchid-hued eyes before hiding her face in Allura’s shoulder.

“Don’t want to,” she mumbles. “He’s scary. Too big.”

“Don’t be silly!” Allura admonishes. “He’s a human, he can’t get any bigger! Someday you could be twice his size with proper form training. Would that make _you_ scary?”

After thinking for a moment, the girl shakes her head no. Allura turns her around again, reassuring her that the Shadow is perfectly harmless. Shiro bends onto one knee and does his best to angle his right arm out of sight. 

“Hey there. What was your question for me?” he asks.

“Is ‘Shadow’ your real name?”

Allura is smirking at him impishly. He tries to level a look over the girl’s head, to little effect. 

“No,” he answers, “it’s just a nickname. You don’t have to call me ‘Shadow’ if you want. My friends call me ‘Shiro.’”

The girl considers it, and decides, “I like ‘Shadow’ better.” Allura makes a very undignified noise as she buries her cackle in the girl’s hair.

“That’s alright,” he sighs. “Now if you know my name, can I know yours?”

“Allura Animous Meryton Caine,” she answers proudly.

“Allura, huh?” Shiro can’t help but smile. “Are you named after the Princess?”

She shakes her head again. “Nuh-uh,” she says, “it was because my big sister is Abiza and my little sister is Amara. I’m Allura like my grandmom and my great-grandmom! And my great-great-grandmom and my great-great-great—”

“Like I said, Shadow,” the elder Allura says, tweaking the tiny pigtails that crown her new friend’s head, “there were scores of us running around. Some things never change.”

But she doesn’t sound as frustrated about sharing a name as she did so many months ago. She almost sounds proud.

 

* * *

 

To Coran’s delight, they arrive at Ysildon ahead of schedule. Maybe it’s the exhaustion of planning, maybe it’s the infectious mood of the joyful Alteans, but he agrees that they can take one day off before the conference begins. The Paladins roar with approval and immediately begin bickering over who has rights to claim a shuttle to explore planetside. Bound by _yluriel_ vow to stay behind with the Castle, Shiro can only hope that Allura will give him his day off by taking her own more slowly.

He receives a distress beacon from her quarters not a half-hour after breakfast. 

“Oh, thank goodness,” she says. “I hope you can swim, Shiro, because I appear to be drowning.”

She’s not exaggerating. From what he can see, the contents of the room appear to be three-quarters gown and one-quarter wearer.

It’s an odd gown, to say the least. The skirt is overflowing with layers like the skin peeling off an onion. The hem is entirely obscured by the winding path of a heavy cape that’s crowned with a high, starched collar, fanned like a fish’s tail. Somehow, that collar is only part of the ensemble that makes sense to him: it frames her bare neck as if it awaits the Star of Allura like the final stroke of the artist’s brush.

He forces his eyes to focus on the gown again and the gown only.

“You look very—” he tries to find a word to politely say ‘strangled’ and picks, “—ivory. That’s a lot of ivory.”

“The finished gown won’t be this color, sir,” the seamstress corrects him, popping up from behind a swath of cape. She looks a little older than Coran, which probably puts her in her seventh century, an eighth or ninth-generation Altean refugee. She has eggshell-blue hair and tawny skin and looks kind, if somewhat frazzled by her impatient client. “This particular dye must be applied only after the final fitting. If Her Highness would just remain still—”

“Illodia, please,” Allura begs, “you have to trim it down again. I won’t fight the cape, but if I have to wear this many underskirts I’ll melt before we get through the processional chorale!”

The seamstress shakes her head. “Your Majesty, we’ve been over this! This style has been worn by court ladies for over fifty thousand years. You must look traditional.”

“I look like Queen Ghiselle the Mad.” Allura flaps her hands for emphasis. The sleeves are so long it appears she has billowing flags for arms. 

Illodia sighs, defeated. “I’ll fetch the seam laser and we’ll see what can be done.” She wags her finger at Allura sternly. “But you’ll keep your word about the cape.”

Shiro smiles after she leaves the room. “I like her,” he says.

“Don’t be so sure,” Allura says. “You haven’t had your own fitting yet.” As she tries to detach some of the frills from the skirt, her earrings chime to signal an incoming comm. She taps her bracelet to receive it—and groans in frustration when she realizes the fabric of her sleeves is blocking the sensor. 

Shiro comes dangerously close to laughing out loud. “Here,” he offers, bending to pick up the sleeve hems from the floor and begin rolling them back. “So between the thousand-pound jewels and the size of this skirt, I take it that Altean coronations are supposed to be seen from space?”

Allura narrows her eyes. “A bold comment from someone with a wardrobe in seven shades of black.”

“Ouch!” he says. _“Touché.”_

“It’s been five years,” Allura sighs, “and I still don’t understand why humans keep saying ‘touch’ after you’re proven wrong.” 

It takes Shiro a minute to understand. “I forgot that you would always hear it translated. It’s another Earth language to me, not my native one. It’s a word used in fencing bouts that means you agree with the referee’s call to award your opponent a point for striking you.”

“‘Fencing?’”

“Swordfighting, but for sport. The blades have blunt tips. When you get hit with one, it’s a _touché.”_

Allura shakes her head. “Swordfighting with blunt-tipped swords! I really don’t know how any of your civilizations have lasted this long.” 

“Hey, give us some credit. Even with blunt-tipped swords, we still made it to space.”

She rolls her eyes, but her mouth is curved in the telltale shape of a bitten-back smile. Shiro feels like a weight has been lifted. They’re back to where they were before, comfortable with trading inside jokes and gentle teasing. They can be friends again, he thinks, if he could just put that night out of his mind, smooth it away like an errant wrinkle in a piece of silk. If one tryst in a dark room is all he has to surrender, so be it.

Caught up in relief, he doesn’t notice that he’s rolled Allura’s sleeves over her wrists, exposing her hands. His knuckles bump clumsily against her fingers as he tucks the fabric back. Allura freezes, and so does Shiro. His right thumb is curled under her palm. 

The contact is so light that the metal plates can’t fully pick up the pressure, and he is faced with the odd sensation of seeing his arm meet something without feeling it. But the truth remains: this is the first time they’ve touched since the attack.

“There,” he says, pushing the sleeve as far back on her wrist as he dares before hurriedly pulling away. “You can call them back, now that you have hands again.” 

Allura nods, but doesn’t move to turn on her comm. She clasps her exposed wrist, lightly rubbing at the place where the bracelet meets her skin. He should leave. But he doesn’t.

Her question comes quite suddenly: “Is this payback?”

“Payback? Payback for what?” 

She steps off of the fitting platform with a slight hop, brushing past him. She stops in front of one of the many tall mirrors Illodia has planted around the room and with careful concentration, begins gathering and twisting her hair up. “For when I was avoiding you, after the first Court assembly. Remember? You had to corner me. We talked about the Three Sisters.”

“Yes,” Shiro says, “I remember. I’m not trying to hide from you.”

“Of course you aren’t. We still have to be within arm’s reach of each other for ten days. I know you. You’d never skimp on the job.” She rifles through a table scattered with fabric scraps, sequins, and thread to find a spare hairpin. “But you clearly have a problem with me, because you refuse to let down your guard around me anymore. I’d like it to stop, because—if I’m being honest—I miss having someone to talk with.”

“We just picked up eight hundred Alteans. You have plenty of people to talk to,” he points out.

Allura turns away from the mirror. “‘With,’ Shiro,” she says, “not ‘to.’ Like I asked of you on Erimos.”

She extends her hand, the gesture for a truce. It is not a command, but not a plea either. Another political strategy, maybe, but he cannot think of her motive. Shiro reaches out and takes it. He can feel the pressure now. He can feel the weight of her palm and the bend of her fingers around his.

“If I let my guard down again,” he says, each word measured carefully, “I won’t be able to do my job.”

Allura open her mouth to reply—and then snatches her hand away. Without a word, she hurries back onto to the fitting platform. 

“Er, Your Highness?” A thin voice speaks up somewhere between the mountain of cape and the doorframe. “It’s Nareen. Illodia sent me back with the seam laser and the material for the Shadow’s uniform. She wants to take his measurements while he’s here.” When Shiro turns there’s a lanky Altean boy with cherry-red hair waiting, arms piled high with more white fabric. He smiles nervously at him. “Afternoon, sir! I’m the Royal Tailor’s assistant. Are you ready for your fitting?”

“Sure. But I think you should focus on Her Highness’ gown first. You won’t have enough room for two people in this room otherwise. I’ll wait outside.” He nods hastily to them both and makes for the door.

When Illodia is finished, she and Nareen take him to another chamber in the royal quarters to be fitted. He does not see Allura again until dinner, and there she is in uniform again and surrounded by Alteans on all sides, as is usual these days. She glances his way more than once, but he doesn’t approach.

He keeps catching himself running his hand over the dents in his arm, unable to decide if he’s memorizing them or trying to erase the marks.

 

* * *

 

Ysildon is a small planet and a very green one. Jungles of thick spotted palms stretch skyward, their leaves glistening with beaded raindrops that pour down when their shuttle skims through the canopy to land at the conference hall. The air is muggy and dense but Shiro finds he likes the fresh, earthy scent. It feels soothing to be on a planet bursting with life after being confined so long in the Castle.

“Princess Allura, may I have the pleasure of welcoming you to Ysildon!” The emissary’s teeth are orange and furry, but her smile is wide and eager. She salutes Allura with three of her four arms and curtsies with all six of her legs. “We are deeply honored that you’ve chosen to speak at the Ysildonian Conference for Galactic Cooperation. We received your list of requests and hope that everything will be to your liking!” She giggles nervously. “To be honest, we never thought you’d actually accept the invitation. ” 

“Of course, I am honored to join you in—wait, requests?” Allura gives Shiro her best side-glare, but when he refuses to give in she turns it on Coran. Coran attempts to whistle and fails badly. “What requests?” 

“The security measures you asked be set up before your appearance.” The emissary motions an assistant over, who pulls up a large file of maps, charts, and schedules spread on holoscreens in front of her. “We’ve hired the extra guards and installed all of the monitors you sent. You already have the rotation schedule and list of attending guests. Everything should run smoothly!”

“Yes,” Allura growls as Coran hits another wrong note, “it shall.”

She corners the two of them after the welcome luncheon, gripping both by the elbow and pulling them behind a large potted fern.

“You told me that changing the route would be enough,” she hisses at Coran. “You promised that you wouldn’t go overboard!”

“Princess, this is not going overboard,” he insists, “this is common sense! Our enemies have shown that they know plenty of ways to lure you out. Every time they’ve attacked, they’ve worn a friendly face. I wanted to fill this place with as many people we can trust as possible, and Shiro agreed with me.”

Shiro nods. “We’ve vetted every guard and every guest. Pidge and Hunk personally examined every monitor we sent them, and Lance was the one who made the delivery.”

“Shiro, the planet is hardly bigger than its own moon!” says Allura, rolling her eyes. “This is paranoia and insanity—” 

“Allura!” He grabs her arm, locking the two of them together from elbow to elbow. It’s enough to shake her, just for a moment, into a look of genuine surprise. “We’re not taking any chances. We can’t afford to. You said they want a spectacle, and this is your last public appearance before Arus. These assassins don’t have the numbers to attack a major military function; they’ve always fled if there’s the possibility of a real battle. If they’re going to strike, it’s got to be here. It’s got to be tonight.”

He takes her other arm, pulling her hand off of Coran. He ignores the voice in the back of his head about how forward this is, how improper. Not long ago he would have obeyed it. Her hand is still clenched around his elbow, her grip much too tight. She looks furious.

“You know that I trust your judgment,” says Shiro. “Could you please, just once, trust mine?”

He holds her gaze. Allura’s hand squeezes tighter, and then she releases him all at once, stepping back. She doesn’t look angry anymore. She looks hesitant. Guarded. And then she doesn’t look at him at all.

“Coran is right. Preparing ourselves for a potential attack is common sense. If everyone has been cleared, scatter the guards throughout the crowd,” she orders. “But there’ll be nothing like the Apeiron Court assembly. Dismiss all soldiers from the stage, all security officers, anyone with a weapon. I want only Shiro there. Above all, don’t give them a chance to target anyone else. If they come, they come for me.”

“Of course, Princess,” Coran agrees quickly. When Allura turns away, he shoots Shiro an expression of complete bewilderment. As the two of them follow her to the next conference event, he whispers to him, “‘Coran is right?’ Over three hundred years of service to the Crown, and yet this job still manages to surprise me.”

Shiro doesn’t answer. The memory of Allura looking truly afraid for even a moment is already beginning to haunt him.

 

* * *

 

Guests welcomed, schedules distributed, the conference proceeds as any other. Shiro stands at Allura’s side through half a dozen discussions, keeping track of each diplomat in the room, each guard changing shifts, each presenter approaching the podium. The Paladins drop by every hour to deliver updates.

“So far nothing suspicious, except for a group of Emorati press secretaries who were way too gorgeous to be real,” Lance reports in the last hour before Allura is due for her final presentation. “Seriously, I’m starting to buy into Keith’s theory that all of them are secretly holograms programmed with a beauty algorithm.”

“It’s the only explanation!” Keith insists from his post. “But yeah, we’re all clear in my sector.”

“They can’t be holograms if they cast shadows, geniuses,” sighs Hunk over the comm. “Talk to me and Pidge when you have a _real_ theory. Oh, and our sector’s clear too, Shiro.”

“Roger. Then we’re clear on this whole level and the Princess is safe to take the stage at the final address.” Shiro checks the time. “Good work, guys. And please stop conspiring about the press secretaries.”

While she acquiesced to the security increase, Shiro feels slightly guilty to see that Allura’s protests weren’t unfounded. He gets curious looks from the other politicians at the conference when he checks in with the stationed guards, and whole conversations trail to a halt as people try to discern what orders he’s giving over the comm. As he and Allura are directed to the grand auditorium, he overhears two elderly empresses gossiping.

“Whatever could the Altean Princess need so much protection for? This conference was highly exclusive.” The old woman fans herself, her long tusks curling over her top lip. “It’s a wonder the Ysildon High Council wasn’t offended by her bringing a small army with her.”

“How could they say no to the Light Bringer?” drawls the other, daring a sneer at Allura as they pass. 

Their host emissary flushes cinnamon brown with embarrassment. Shiro bites his tongue in order to appear indifferent. Allura glides by as if they were part of the wallpaper.

When they round the corner, a voice speaks up, “Don’t mind them, Your Highness. Those old bats are only bitter that they were passed up for seats on the Apeiron Court by their smarter, younger cousins.” 

Shiro nearly crashes into her as Allura stops and whirls around on the spot.

“Senator S’girghan!” she exclaims with delight. “It’s been so long! You told me that you wouldn’t be able to make it here!” 

“I was lucky enough to have my bill passed last-minute, my dear Princess.” S’girghan bows their head, falling in step with their party. “I thought I’d celebrate by relaxing in the furthest place from the Morklin Senate I could find, and here I am!” They chuckle, three sets of teeth glinting. “Yet even on vacations I seem to get sucked into political talks.”

The two converse on the way backstage as Allura is prepped for her address, laughing like old friends. Shiro hangs further back than he usually does, unsure of whether to speak up or not. Though he could probably spout off more government jargon than anyone other than Coran, he feels strangely out of his depth as Allura and S’girghan trade gossip on at least seven different intergalactic congresses. 

 _You forgot you were beneath her,_ he reminds himself cooly. _You forgot that this was never your place._

“Princess,” the emissary cuts in, “the audience will take their seats soon. We have to move you to the other side of the stage.”

“You must join us on the Castle of Lions after the reception tonight, Senator,” Allura insists. “Our bays have plenty of space for your ship and not a single politician, save myself. You could extend your vacation and come with us to Arus.”

S’girghan chuckles. “You are a skilled negotiator, Your Highness. At the very least I will join you for dinner. I hear your Yellow Paladin’s won the Cthithes Six-Star Medallion of Culinary Excellence twice in a row now.” 

The Senator takes their leave as Allura is ushered further backstage and fitted with a new comm so that the speech prompter can cue her. They are led through maze-like passages, halls crammed with dusty spotlights and glowing cables coiled like nests of snakes. 

Shiro feels tense, cornered in by the tight space. In the narrow halls he can’t fit two steps to Allura’s right, so he keeps close behind her, turning his head to try and see every angle, every vantage point. They cleared the rest of the building, but anyone could hide here, anyone could take advantage. Some part of his mind is insisting he be rational, but the rest is whirling, churning out the dark possibilities one after another, an endless cycle of _what if what if what if?_

When he treads on Allura’s heel, she whirls around, blocking his path.

“Stop it!” she hisses. “Just stop!”

“Princess, you can’t let down your guard—”

“No, enough! For six months I’ve been jumping at shadows, second-guessing every friend I have, every ally I’ve made! I’ve had enough of living like this!” Her eyes are livid, flashing pink and blue in the dark. “I’ve had enough of _you!”_

The air backstage is stale, choked with dust. Shiro stands there, breathing it in, feeling his mouth and throat turn chalky, bitter, dry.

“You were right, Princess,” he says. “I should have taken more time to consider your offer.” He swallows, tasting grit. “I don’t believe I am fit to be _yluriel_ after all.”

Far ahead, the emissary calls for the two of them, confused. Shiro doesn’t bother answering. He turns and walks straight back down the passage, dodging the tangled cables and wires and crates, ducking under scaffolding and shoving everything else aside. He doesn’t look back.

 

* * *

 

Shiro very quickly finds himself lost. The longer he remains lost, he more he discovers that he doesn’t care about anything but finishing the conference and leaving this backwater planet. His timer reminds him that Allura’s speech is minutes away, and the security rounds are still on schedule.

“I’ll be stationed at stage right,” he grunts into his comm, but ignores the Paladins’ affirmations. He doesn’t bother paging Allura to pass on the message to the emissary that he’s changing positions. Let her figure it out. Let her make some excuse.

“Ah, pardon me? Shadow? Paladin Shirogane?”

So focused on finding his way back to the main stage, Shiro almost trips over Senator S’girghan. He swears under his breath as he avoids the collision, trying to school his face back into a neutral expression.

“I’m sorry, Senator, but you just missed her,” Shiro apologizes. “The speech starts in a few minutes, and I have no idea where the stage entrance begins back there.”

“That’s alright.” S’girghan waves a hand. “I don’t need to bother finding her back there, I just have to wait for her to walk onstage. Besides, it wasn’t the Princess I wanted to see.” They smile, their three jaws widening. “It was you.”

“Me?” Shiro frowns, confused. “What did you want to see me for?”

S’girghan beckons him closer with one hand. Cautiously, he bends down so that that they whisper into his ear.

“To ensure the job gets done.”

Pain. Shiro’s body is crippled with it, every nerve aflame. He opens his mouth but can’t force himself to scream. His knees hit the ground, his legs unable to hold him up any longer, and as he crumples Shiro makes the mistake of looking down.

Slowly, S’girghan pulls their clawed hand out of his stomach, fingers shining with blood and smoking with a sickly purple light.

“You might have made a fine Druid, had you chosen the path,” they muse, wiping the hand on Shiro’s armor. His blood smears across the white plate. “Diligence, endurance, foresight. A willingness to go far beyond expectations. The Altean girl kept you for a pet, when we could’ve made you a god.” Three tongues lick three scaly lips. “What a waste.”

Shiro forces his arms to move, his hands to cover the wound. The second he touches it, the agony is enough to make him see stars. The gash pulses with purple light hotter than fire. It sinks into his skin, eating at the flesh. S’girghan watches, satisfied, and then begins to walk away.

It takes all his strength, but with a pained cry and a quick push, Shiro lunges forward, seizes S’girghan by the throat, and activates his right arm.

“I’ll kill you,” he snarls, “before you dare touch her.”

S’girghan looks up at him, eyes wide, the skin around their throat beginning to blacken under his fingers. But they don’t resist, don’t even push him away. As the ghastly smell of burning flesh fills the air, the senator only grins a three-mouthed grin.

“Oh, Shadow,” they croon, “you’ll be dead before her body hits the floor.”

They bring both hands up to grab Shiro’s arm. As soon the purple light meets the metal, the limb begins to rattle, shaking as if controlled by an invisible string. Sparks fly, bolts snap. With a short crack and burst of black smoke, the arm deactivates, the pulsing veins stilling, no longer alight. Like a cooling flame, the metal fades from white to blue to yellow to red before it becomes plain steel once more.

With a quick shove, S’girghan easily parts his fingers and frees their neck, then shoves their shoulder against Shiro’s collarbone and sends him flying.

“I must commend the Princess,” says S’girghan. “With no warriors of her own kind left, she chose the second-best candidate for her personal guard. But the fact still stands that you are no Altean.” They bow curtly, brushing dust off their robes. “Now I have a schedule to keep, so I must cut this short. But it was truly an honor to meet you, Black Paladin, if only to see what you could have been. Farewell, and _vrepit sa.”_

Reaching into their sleeve, S’girghan produces a familiar remote—

“No,” Shiro gasps, _“no—”_

—and pressing the button to activate the cloaking device, they vanish.

 

* * *

 

 _Up._ If he thinks of the word like an order, maybe his body will obey. _Get up. Get up. Get. Up._

The wound still glows, the ragged edges of his black maille singed and frayed around it. He can feel the infection spreading like hot vines creeping into his gut, taking root and spreading up through his chest. Once, years ago, a lifetime ago, they rescued Allura from the Galra Central Command System and Haggar struck him. The pain then was enough to nearly render him unconscious. That pain is nothing compared to this.

_Get up. You have to get up._

He reaches for his comm, but his blood-slick hands slip on the controls, unable to enter the proper code. After another minute of failed attempts, he remembers Allura isn’t on the comm anyway—they fitted her with an Ysildon line before he left her backstage. She might already have begun the speech. She might not pick up at all.

 _Get up, you stupid, useless, stupid, stupid, stupid asshole._  

He left her. He turned and left her. After everything. Allura went back for him on Zarkon’s base. Allura carried him after Mata’kuul, the final battle of the war. Allura placed a fifty-thousand-year-old crown on his head, told him the meaning of her name, and promised that she would never hurt him for making a mistake.

He never thanked her for any of it. He never told her how much all of it meant. 

Shiro grits his teeth, presses his left hand harder against the wound, hoping that if he can’t stop the infection he can at least staunch some of the bleeding. He braces his right hand against the wall.

“Get up,” he hisses, and digging his fingers in hard enough to break through the brick, he painfully, clumsily, stands.

 

* * *

 

Each step, each movement, is torture. Calling it walking would be a vast overstatement; Shiro shambles, stumbles, sways his way through the maze, the drunken gait of a dying man. He concentrates on remaining upright only because crawling will make him too slow, and each second matters now. He may already be too late. He strains to keep his eyes open and his feet moving.

He doesn’t even notice the Ysildonian stagehand until she starts screaming.

Shouts, more screams. Questions, orders. Ysildonians are clustering around him, trying to get him to sit down. A few manage to bind his abdomen after he instructs them how, winding strips of fabric that they rip from their own clothes.

“You said it’s the Shadow? What does he—” the stage manager gasps when she sees Shiro, four hands shooting up to cover her mouth. “Great Gods!” She turns to the others, aghast. “Don’t just stand there! Hold him still, we need to find a medic! Call for the Paladins of Voltron!”

“Wait,” Shiro orders. His throat is too hot and too tight, the taste of bile creeping into his mouth. He breathes raggedly, trying to keep his heartbeat even. “I know where the assassin is. We have one shot at taking them out, and if the crowd panics they’ll get away—” He coughs and spits out a glob of saliva and blood. He can feel sweat pouring down his face, though his legs are so cold now he can’t feel his feet. He doesn’t have much time. “I need a comm, private line, set to the speech prompter frequency. I need it _now.”_

It must take only seconds for stage manager to yank off her headset and wrangle it onto him, but to Shiro it feels like a year. He’s swaying again as he flicks through the channels, stopping when he hears the emcee’s introduction.

_And now, please welcome our guest of honor: Her Royal Highness, Princess Allura of Altea!_

The auditorium booms with applause. With trembling fingers, Shiro activates the comm.

“Princess—” Another cough, more burning and painful than the previous two. “Allura, can you hear me?”

Silence. A lifetime.

Then, a crackle against the microphone from the exhale of a quiet, “Shiro?”

“They’re here. They’re coming from the backstage tunnels. I don’t know where. Take out the cloaking device.”

The applause is dying down. Allura can’t respond audibly anymore, not in front of the microphone. The world is rocking violently now, his legs numb up to the knee. He puts a hand out to steady himself and lands on one of the stagehands, who squeaks in panic and buckles, not expecting to take his weight. He wants to apologize, but the movement steals what’s left of his balance—he crashes downward one piece at a time, hitting his knees, his hips, his elbows one after the other.

His cheek is pressed against the floor. It feels grossly warm, sticky with his blood. All he can see from here are the blurred shapes of running feet.

“Alright,” he slurs, “I think I could use that medic.”

He doesn’t see what happens next, but with the headset on he does hear it. He hears the cheers of the crowd settle into enthralled attention as the tiny clicks of Allura’s heels come to a halt at the podium. He hears her short intake of breath as she steadies herself like she always does, rising ever so slightly onto her toes as she begins to speak. He hears her thank the Chancellor and the planet Ysildon for their warm reception, voice as even and steady as ever as she begins her opening remarks.

“It has perhaps always been the case,” Allura says, “that the waging of peace is the hardest form of leadership of all.”

Someone rolls him over. Someone prods a hand at his pulse. Shiro closes his eyes, his head lolling back, and wonders dimly which Altean goddess watched over the dead. Was it one of the two warring sisters? Or was it the compassionate one, the peacemaker? He strains to listen for Allura’s voice again but everything is muffled, blending together.

The last thing he hears is not a voice. It’s the sound of lighting, sizzling, crackling, hissing with the strange fizz of electricity bursting in the air.

 

* * *

 

The hardest part is opening his eyes.

“Shiro, you know I love you, but this is one of those times where I would love you more if you weren’t six-foot-three and had an arm made of solid steel.” 

He tries one eyelid, then the other. The top of Pidge’s head slowly comes into focus. He attempts to lift his head to look further up, and is rewarded with a stabbing pain in his temple strong enough to make him groan.

“Don’t pass out, please,” Pidge grunts. Something tightens around Shiro’s back. She must be propping him upright. “I said I could help you out of the pod by myself if you woke up early. Lance still won’t let go of the one time he benched ten pounds more than me on the training deck, and that was four years ago. If I can’t get you down one hallway we’ll both have to hear about it for the next decade.” 

His legs feel like jelly, but he takes some of his weight off Pidge, shuffling forward at a zombie-like pace. Together they manage to get to the smaller medbay adjoining the pod chambers without falling, a feat in itself. 

Once she’s sure he can sit up on his own, Pidge bustles about the medbay gathering scanners, a bio monitor, a glass of water when Shiro croaks a request. The medbay is active, its myriad Altean tools humming and beeping as Pidges waves over Shiro to take a few readings, but strangely empty.

“Not gonna lie, I was expecting a larger welcome wagon,” Shiro says, searching the room for other medics and patients and finding none. “The last few times I had to use a pod I woke up to every nose in the Castle pressed against the glass.”

“You might’ve gotten a cake too if you’d napped for another few hours.” Pidge prods his temple with a blinking glass bulb that stings when it touches his skin, swatting Shiro’s hand away when he tries to push it back on instinct. Altean letters light up on the surface and she removes the device when she’s satisfied with whatever the results seem to be. “Right now it’s—relax, it’s just a thermometer—0630-ish. Whoever isn’t asleep is probably still working on the coronation hall. Last time I checked they were almost done laying out the chairs, only had about two hundred left to arrange.” 

Coran’s coronation plan, he remembers, scheduled the seating arranging for two days before the ceremony. The Ysildon conference was designed to leave them a generous margin of eight days by the end of their visit. Shiro’s brain is slow to warm up, but finally he completes the calculation.

“Wait, Pidge,” he says, trying to speak around the very large and very cold tool she’s pressing against his tongue, “was I really out for a week?”

“Six and a half days, technically. The first one they had to, uh—” she gestures to his abdomen, “—fix some stuff. Those healing pods can do a lot, but apparently they don’t run organ regeneration protocols if your chances at surviving the regrowth period aren’t high enough, and yours at that point were definitely not high. So we had to override the controls after the medics stabilized you and then we had to wait—" 

“Pidge, what happened on stage?” he demands. “Where’s Allura?”

“Allura is fine,” she reassures him.

“So who’s guarding her now?”

“Right now she’s with Hunk, and both of them are in the safe hands of an honor guard of, well, pretty much every Altean on Arus. Allura’s in the middle of some kind of meditation-hibernation thing that Coran says is too sacred to even begin explaining, so we’ve been switching off being _yluriel_ in shifts.” Pidge counts off on her fingers. “I did the first two days, Lance did another two, and then Keith finished his shift yesterday. He covered for Hunk in the kitchen tonight. That was a whole different kind of intergalactic tragedy.” 

“Pidge, enough. You’re stalling.” Shiro pushes her tools away. “Tell me what happened after I blacked out." 

Pidge shuffles her feet, looking guilty, and then shakes her head. “It’s easier if I just show you.”

 

* * *

 

Shiro can watch the vid from at least ten different angles, thanks to the news bots that covered the conference. The version Pidge pulls up is facing Allura directly from the front, focused at a mid-range distance that shows part of the stage to either side of her as well.

The events unfold just as he pictured: Allura walks to the podium, smiling gently as she approaches. When the applause dies down, she leans forward and begins her speech. She continues normally for a minute or two before there’s a flare of light from stage left. She holds up her hand and—

“Sorry,” Pidge says, pausing the vid and flipping to another. “You can’t really see what happens from that view. Try this one. Watch her left arm.”

This vid was taken closer to the outside edge of the auditorium and from a front-row seat at the far right. Allura is at a sharp angle, almost in profile. As she begins again to read, she tucks her left arm behind her back, bent at the elbow. Shiro has to squint to see it, but it looks like her arm is slowly swelling, the bone at her elbow becoming sharper and bonier. It strains at the sleeve of her dress as her upper arm begins to shift too, the curve of her shoulder coming nearly to a point as a patch of skin on her neck blushes into a shade of blue.

“Erimosi chitin,” Shiro realizes.

“You, uh, probably can figure out what happens next,” says Pidge, pausing it again, “but you have to promise me you won’t freak out. It went galactically viral before I could get my hands on the feed, so you’d have to see it at some point.” She grimaces. “And Allura’s fine now, like I said, so please, please, don’t freak out?”

Shiro holds up his hands. “No freaking out,” he swears.

Pidge presses play.

Allura’s arm changes form, and the speech continues, and the flare of light erupts from offstage. The footage replays the event in slow motion, the editor refocusing on her arm growing supernaturally armored nearly out of sight as the shot is fired. But a second—no, a millisecond—before the purple light smashes into Allura’s side, her head turns, her hand comes up, and her chitin-coated arm catches the blast.

Frame by frame, Shiro watches her left hand splinter down the center, the blue chitin shattered like glass, the skin ripping down to bone.

And in the next millisecond, Allura swings her unharmed right hand around and fires a charge of pink-white energy so hot that it buckles the camera lens. The vid ends there.

“She said since she couldn’t see the Senator, she had to wait for the shot to hit so she’d know where to aim. When S’girghan’s cloaking device shorted out we found them blasted through two walls and knocked out cold. The Princess insisted we revive them so that they could stand trial. So, typical Allura.” Pidge clarifies, “After she got help for you, though. You were kind of a priority.”

Shiro rubs his hands over his eyes. “Okay. You told me not to freak out. I’m not going to freak out.” He pushes himself off the exam table, wobbles too much to stand, and hops back onto it. “Not freaking out at all. Allura’s entire arm was split in half while I bled to death and that was the one thing I was supposed to prevent. That’s what happened and I’m not freaking out about it.”

Pidge puts her hands on her hips. “Hey, I told you she was fine! We fixed it! We pushed her into a pod and her arm’s as good as new! And we’ve been keeping her distracted for six days too, because she’s been driving herself insane with guilt. Coran was actually worried she might abdicate if she wasn’t watched. She wanted to push back the coronation, but the medics said you should be conscious within seven days and mobile within eight, and Keith said you’d hate if everyone made that much of a fuss.”

“He’s right,” Shiro agrees, “and I’m glad you didn’t, because now I have more time to get back in shape.” This time he succeeds at hopping off the exam table and remaining on his feet. “The coronation’s tomorrow and I have to walk in it as _yluriel.”_

Pidge blinks. “Okay,” she says, voice rising in pitch, “I give up. I give up!” She pushes her glasses into her hair and presses the comm chip attached to the side of the lens. “Dr. Holt’s shift is over, folks! She’s leaving the building! She’s going home to her wife and kids!”

“What?” Lance’s voice crackles through, groggy. “Pidge, it’s too early for th—wait, is Shiro awake? Shiro’s awake!”

Immediately Keith’s comm chimes on too. “I’ll be right there,” is all he says before turning it back off. It feels like only a few seconds before he comes sprinting into the medbay, bedheaded and with a sock missing. He crushes Shiro into a hug.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he mumbles.

“Couldn’t agree more,” Pidge quips. 

When Lance finally arrives, he’s brought a Rover in tow with a holoscreen trailing behind it. “I come with fondest wishes from Hunk!” he announces, throwing an arm around Shiro’s shoulders and widening the holoscreen with the other. “According to this update he’s glad you’re awake, he wishes you would stop overexerting yourself after every near-death experience, and he reports that royal Altean vision quests are beyond wild. He, quote, ‘drank star water from the fountain of time’ and claims that Allura is now his best friend forever. Actually,” Lance squints at the message, “this kind of reads like—oh my god, is Hunk breaking up with us? Did they poison his mind with magic space water?!”

“Ignoring that, Hunk is right.” Keith shoos Lance and the Rover away. “You shouldn’t go to the coronation like this. You’d have to be alert and at attention for hours, Shiro, and it’s not worth the risk.”

“We can handle the guard stuff,” Pidge promises. “We want to help! We planned to let you sleep in, wake you up with a breakfast spread, put you in a fancy hoverchair and push you through the procession like a hero’s parade. You can earn your two millionth Medal of Honor in peace.” 

“See? Even _these two_ are being reasonable about this!” Lance waves his arms at the others for emphasis. “Plus, not fainting on top of her is the least you could do to thank Allura for saving your life.”

Lance yelps as Pidge hurls the stinging thermometer at him while Keith simultaneously slams his elbow into his side. But the damage is done. Shiro crosses his arms behind his back, the drill instructor stance, and channels every ounce of commanding presence he has.

“Someone,” he orders slowly, “better tell me the whole story. Immediately.”

The three of them exchange glances. Pidge shoves Lance forward.

“Look,” he begins, hands raised placatingly, “we were under orders not to say anything. The Princess didn’t want you to feel like you owed her something, and she wouldn’t have done it if the situation wasn’t so bad. You bled too much before the medics closed the wound. We didn’t have enough time to move you to a pod or a medbay or even roll you off the stage.” Lance takes a deep breath, as if bracing himself for the fallout. “So Allura revived you with her quintessence.”

“‘Revived?’ Like the Balmera?”

“No, not like that,” Keith corrects Shiro quietly. “The Balmera was dying. You were already dead.”

Shiro stares at the three of them.

“Clinically dead: no heartbeat, no pulse, no breathing.” Pidge pulls her glasses back down to her nose and tugs at a strand of her hair. “Brain cells start dying after ten minutes. We did CPR for twenty and there was nothing. My bayard doesn’t have enough shock to be a substitute defibrillator, and the nearest human medical experts were about four hundred galaxies away.”

“Allura was the one who made the call. Not that there was much of a choice for her either,” says Lance. “She said it if went wrong it would only hurt her, not you. But it worked, and you’re fine, and so is she. She had us take guard shifts watching your pod while she was on this retreat with Hunk because she couldn’t do it herself. That’s how Pidge saw you wake up early.”

Pidge snorts. “She said, ‘When he’s conscious, ask Shiro how he likes being followed around and fretted over incessantly for a change.’”

Shiro can’t think of what to say. He hardly knows what to think. He takes a careful step backward and leans against the exam table, runs a hand over his face. Quintessence, the energy from a living soul. “Everyone has it,” Shay told him once, “but only truly incredible beings can wield it. There’s only a handful of people in the entire universe who can give or take quintessence without killing themselves on the spot.”

He pictures the scene: Allura, her broken, bleeding arm stretched over him, tearing off a piece of her soul and using it to mend his.

“Guys,” he says finally, “I have to walk in the procession. For her. You know I have to.”

The three of them look at each other, then at him. Keith steps forward and squeezes his arm.

“If we can’t talk you out of it, then we’ll make sure you do it right,” he insists. “You can’t march on your own, not like this. You’d never reach the top of the temple steps.”

“And all of this drama will have been for nothing!” Lance pushes him backward until he sits back down. “If I start seeing grey hairs, I’m naming half of them after you and the other half after Allura. These last six months have taken ten years off my life!”

“You’re telling me,” Pidge mutters, but she pushes her glasses up her nose and looks at Shiro appraisingly. “Alright, boys, we’ve got twenty-four hours to work with. Let’s see what we can do.”

 

* * *

 

The Paladins get to work. After receiving engineering and recipe advice from Hunk, it doesn’t take long for Lance, Pidge, and Keith to break down and modify a practice staff into a functional cane, coach Shiro through some light exercises to get used to walking with it, and prepare a Super-Powered Mystery Protein Shake. “You’re so lucky to have four space geniuses for friends,” Pidge brags.

He has to give some credit to the healing pods, too. When the four of them meet Nareen for their final fittings after dinner, Shiro stares at the place where S’girghan clawed through him and can hardly find the mark.

“How does it feel?” Nareen asks him, sliding out the final pin. He straightens the back of the collar and brushes off a few stray threads as Shiro examines himself in the mirror. The fabric is thick but not heavy, creased cleanly at the shoulders and cuffs. The braid along the edges of the collar and epaulets is made of strand of the same gold-blue metal encasing the Three Sisters, and the epaulets themselves cleverly hide the clasps for a semi-sheer wrapped cape. There isn’t a stitch out of place, but something still feels off to him.

“I think there was a bit of a mix-up,” he says hesitantly. “My armor color is black, not blue. You might have dyed my uniform in Lance’s color.”

Pidge pokes her head out from behind her folding screen. “Hey! I’m in blue, too!”

“Same here.” Keith frowns at his sleeves.

“At last,” Lance says, stars in his eyes, “Allura accidentally told the entire universe that I’ve been her favorite all along!”

“There was no mix-up,” Nareen corrects them. “The Princess insisted on blue for all five of the Paladins.” Pidge laughs as Lance deflates.

“But why?” asks Keith.

Nareen gives him a pitiful, patient look, like a parent answering a child’s obvious questions.

“This blue is the color of the royal house,” he says. “Only the royal family is allowed to wear it.”

After the four of them change back and hand the uniforms over to Nareen, Pidge looks at Keith and says, “Well, we both lost the bet over who would cry first. Fifty units each on Hunk and Coran and here Lance beats them both twelve hours before the ceremony even begins.”

“Some way to treat your family!” Lance protests loudly, wiping his eyes. But he lets Keith throw an arm around his shoulder and give him a mocking half-hug.

“And don’t even start, Shiro,” Pidge warns, rounding on him. “You’re wearing that dumb face that you always have when you’re about to give us a speech on how much we’ve grown."

“Seconded,” says Lance as he recovers from his sniffles. “I know that in your heart you still think of us as four lovable-but-clueless teenaged flight school dropouts—”

“Dropouts? Speak for yourself! My PhD is framed in the rec room!”

“—Fine, three flight school dropouts and one obnoxious Doctor of Xenolinguistics, but we’re grown-up war heroes now! We don’t need to be babied! Plus, I made a bet with Lieutenant Fraxxam over who would cry first too, and I still have money riding on Hunk! So save the speech for him.”

“Just for that, I _will_ make get ahold of a mic at the reception,” Shiro threatens. “I’ll make a toast. You’ll all be sobbing into your royal blue sleeves.”

The three of them groan as he catches them to tousle their hair, but not one pulls away.

 

* * *

 

The final morning. The Castle lands on Arus, shaking the earth as it docks in its former ten-thousand-year grounding site, becoming another piece of the mountains. When the airlocks open, they’re ambushed by swarms of Arusians. The Peace Guard soldiers begin to shout, looking panicked.

“It’s fine!” calls Keith from under a pile of excited snail-horned toddlers. “They just love hugs!”

Then the crowd thins, and a much taller figure strides through the sea of snail shells. Shiro barely has time to free his legs from two clinging Arusian grandmothers before Hunk swoops in and hugs him hard enough to hoist him into the air. 

“Okay, I was totally planning on giving you a really stern talk about not seeking medical help in emergencies,” Hunk says, squeezing tighter, “but I just had a life-changing field trip with Allura and my Lion in a crazy secret waterfall meditation cave, and I had a vision of all of time and space and got a great idea for a soufflé, so I’m feeling really at peace with everything in the universe, man.” He sets Shiro down and pats both sides of his face. “Please take your job back, though. She walks so fast, I don’t know how you got your leg distance so even!”

“I missed you too, Hunk,” Shiro laughs, and hugs him back.

It feels like time begins to speed up as the hour of the ceremony nears. Illodia and Nareen return with the finished uniforms and in the blink of an eye a ship full of mismatched aliens is a royal court. They ready the Lions, they organize the Peace Guard in parade formation, they clear out the Castle and join the crowds planetside.

They fly to the temple, and Shiro feels he’s hardly left the ground before he’s landing again. The crowd around the parade route doubles, then triples, then quintuples every time he turns his head. Suddenly the hovering carriages arrive. Suddenly the other Paladins depart, ready to head the procession. Suddenly Coran is here, waving him into a carriage of his own.

When he turns in his seat the largest carriage is just behind his, sleek and silver, its tinted glass windows etched with the royal crest.

The second it inches forward, every voice on Arus begins to cheer. As they process to the temple steps, the cheer grows ever louder, like waves building on a stormy sea.

It’s time. Now, finally, it’s time.

Shiro’s pulse is throbbing as he steps out of his carriage and waits at the foot of the steps. He’s less steady on the cane than he would like, but he keeps his gait as even as he can, turning on his heel as Coran taught him. His carriage driver salutes and steers the vehicle away in order to leave the road free for the silver carriage to glide into place. 

The carriage door slides open from bottom to top, folding away neatly into invisible seams. An Altean footman hops out of the pilot’s seat and bows to the unseen passenger, hand outstretched. Shiro takes a breath and waits.

And waits. 

And waits.

No movement. The crowd is still roaring, still expecting. The Peace Guard remains at attention, not a single one daring to move a muscle.

But the Altean nobles in formation on either side of the path glance at one another, too timid to voice their confusion aloud. A young woman in handmaiden’s robes looks left and right before carefully making herself just tall enough to bend her head in Shiro’s direction and whisper, “Shadow, do you know what’s going on? Why doesn’t the Queen come out?”

“I don’t know.” Shiro squints, trying to see inside the carriage to no avail. “Maybe we’re ahead of schedule. We just have to wait.”

A minute passes, then another. The crowd’s roar dims a little. The footman’s hand starts to shake. He’s young, Shiro notes, hardly older than Keith, Lance, and Hunk were when they left the Garrison. His eyes dart to the temple steps, to Shiro himself. He looks just as perplexed as the handmaiden.

Shiro pushes the tip of his cane into the stone, twisting the handle. He mutters to his neighbor, “Tell everyone else to act like nothing is wrong. When the Queen steps out, just go through everything like it was planned.” Once the handmaiden begins to pass the message down the line, he takes a deep breath to steady himself.

In front of thousands, in front of the universe, Shiro walks toward the carriage, curtly shoos away and takes the place of the footman, and goes against everything he was taught.

“Hey,” he says, ducking his head through the door. The dark glass casts the interior in shadow. There’s a silhouette in the rear, a dark head that turns with a rustle of silk.

“Hello,” Allura answers quietly.

“Been a while.” Shiro raises an eyebrow. “Heard a waterfall showed you the secrets of the universe’s best soufflé yesterday?”

“Yes. Something like that.” The head turns again. “You know, Shiro, I thought this part would be the easiest. My ancestors had it much harder; Altea’s Temple of Being was twenty times larger what we have here on Arus. It took my father nearly an hour to get to the altar, and I’ll be there in under a minute.”

“Yeah, you’ve got it pretty easy. Just a few steps, remember?”

“I know. The problem is that I can’t seem to move my feet.”

In a gesture he hopes look smooth and practiced, Shiro bows deeply at the waist— _saikeirei,_ his mother would say, _for only the most important people_ —and offers Allura his hand.

She doesn’t take it. For a moment he understands how the footman must’ve felt, waiting there with his arm outstretched. He feels the back of his neck grow hot with embarrassment as he tries to come up with another solution, another way to coax her out, but then Allura speaks.

“We’re not supposed to touch, during the walk,” she states.

“I’m not supposed to have this during the walk either.” He lifts up his cane.

“It’s not traditional.” She sounds more uncertain, but she’s shifted closer to the door.

“Like you said, none of this is. Though we’re all big fans of Arusian architecture, those steps are a little uneven.” Shiro shrugs. “You don’t want to trip."

“No,” Allura says, "I suppose I don’t," and she takes his hand.

When she moves into the light at last, Shiro’s bravado wavers. Her hair is braided and studded with pearls, twisted into a series of pleats and swirls at the back of her neck. The crown of her head glimmers like snow in the sun.

True to Illodia’s word, the gown is no longer ivory—the fabric is a deep navy, so dark in places it almost becomes black. The raised pattern is visible now, and shimmers with iridescent thread pulled through the layers. As the handmaidens gather to help straighten the train as Shiro helps her down the carriage’s steps, the design is revealed: hundreds of miniature comets streaking from her shoulders to the hem in a glistening rain.

The second her foot touches the ground, the noise from the crowd is like nothing he’s ever heard before. The carriage pulls away and the nobility file in behind them as they walk to the end of the processional path. At the bottom step, Shiro can feel his heart pounding.

“Ready?” he manages to say.

Without turning her head, Allura’s eyes dart his way. She wears the world’s smallest, wryest smile. “Not in the slightest.” 

Together, they ascend.

 

* * *

 

The ceremony is long, dry, and largely inexplicable to anyone who isn’t glued to the projected subtitles. Yet Shiro can’t tear his eyes away even during the longest speeches. When Allura receives the Three Sisters, a duchess seated on his left whom he’s never met before lightly grips his shoulder and gasps. It feels like everyone here is connected, their lives now forever tied together. They will leave the temple and tell their children, _Today, I witnessed history unfold. I saw the dawn of a new age._

With no royal consort, Coran is the first is take his spot at Allura’s feet during the Homage. When she takes away the sword and kisses him on both cheeks, Shiro notices she also lays a hand on his wrist, a small gesture nearly hidden from the onlookers. He can’t say what passes between them, but when Coran comes back down the steps there is a soft look in his eyes and wet trails down his cheeks. He nods to Shiro, looking tired and humbled and very, very proud.

He mouths, _Your turn._

Shiro understands now why Allura couldn’t leave the carriage. His legs feel heavier than lead, stiffer than steel as he climbs up to the altar. Every eye following him is a needle in his skin. His right arm aches; a pain remembered, not really felt. If he concentrated, he might even hear Galra jeering.

With shaking legs, he kneels.

“I, Takashi Shirogane, Black Paladin of Voltron, do become your liege of life and limb, and of earthly worship; and faith and truth I will bear unto you, to live and die, against all manner of folk. So it shall be.”

Allura already has the ceremonial sword at hand. The blade glints in the light, a cruel and deadly mirror, and she twirls it once as if this is simply another warmup, another spar with a practice bot set to—what level was she on now? Ninety-six? How many levels did those things even have before it was guaranteed that they’d kill you? Shiro bites his tongue sharply. He’s losing focus too fast. He forces himself to look away from the blade, but what else is there but the blade?

She’s walking forward now, her other hand taking its place on the grip. Shiro fastens his gaze on her hands and makes them move away from the sword. Her hands become her wrists, and her wrists are hidden by her sleeves. His eyes move to her elbows, her shoulders, the gilded chestplate fastened over her bodice and beneath the Star of Allura.

Her neck, framed by the silk frill. Her jaw, no longer locked and tense. Her calm face and her eyes, nearly solid pools of sky blue and violet and a streak of pink, that lock on his.

When she brings the sword down, Shiro doesn’t feel a thing.

“Perfect,” she whispers when he rises, a ghost of breath as she kisses one side of his face and then the other, high on his cheekbones where two crescent marks are not.

At the end of the ceremony, Allura takes the throne one last time. Her handmaidens unfasten the pieces of armor so that Coran and the King of the Arusians may drape a sea-blue cloth around her shoulders. It stretches almost as long as her processional cape, trailing far behind her. A gilt letter is stitched on the back, an Altean character that looks vaguely familiar.

 _“Garras_. It stands for life,” Pidge whispers to him. “Life even after the end of everything. It’s ‘now and forevermore.’”

Allura stands. Tall, straight-backed, graceful, she rises from the throne with her head held high. There is no trembling, no hesitance at all, and she stands before them with the crown steady on her head and without a shred of fear in her eyes.

She is glorious. She is holy. She is perfect.

At once, crowd leaps to its feet and erupts in deafening cheers:

_**ALL HAIL QUEEN ALLURA!** _

**_LONG LIVE QUEEN ALLURA!_ **

**_MAY THE QUEEN LIVE FOREVER!_ **

It’s an incredible sound, the symphony of shouting and music from hundreds of worlds all coming together in one mad rush of celebration. There are Arusians singing and Digodi blowing horns and Balmerans playing drums twice their size. Shiro can’t pick out the Paladins’ voices from among the din, but at his side he can see their mouths moving and hands clapping.

All four of them are grinning wider than he’s ever seen, and all of their cheeks are streaked with tears.

Only then does Shiro realize that he, too, is weeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's back.
> 
> I would like to first extend a huge thank to Mer (and all of my other very kind and patient readers) for the massive delay in completing this fic. If you read through some of the comment threads in Part II, you might have seen that my last quarter of grad school massively kicked my ass and sucked up pretty much all of my energy. And Part III needed a LOT of energy. This chapter is over 12k words, and this fic in total is the longest piece of writing I have ever produced, in my entire life. O____________O yeah. In addition, attempting to edit something of this size means there are definitely some errors I did not catch! Check back in a few days and those missing punctuation marks and obvious skipped over key words should appear in shameful time.
> 
> Footnotes this time!  
> \- The opening line of Allura's speech on Ysildon ("It has perhaps always been the case that the waging of peace is the hardest form of leadership of all.") is an actual quote from a speech given by Queen Elizabeth II in an address to the United Nations General Assembly on July 6, 2010. You can read through that speech [here.](https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/03/21/address-to-the-united-nations-general-assembly-july-6-2010/)  
> \- For Allura’s ~looks~ in Part III, I actually made a Pinterest board to capture all of my influences, which you are welcome to browse [here!](http://pin.it/izIdRlK)  
> \- For her coronation gown I drew a lot of inspiration from the dresses of Queen Anne of Austria in BBC’s _The Musteteers,_ which somehow make gravity-defying neck frills seem the most elegant gown accessory possible. There’s also some influence from the court gown styles of Elizabeth I, of course. Gotta stick with that Elizabeth theme.  
>  \- EDIT 10/13/17 I FORGOT THAT I WAS ALSO INSPIRED BY [THE FASHION IN THIS FANART!!!](http://frogopera.tumblr.com/post/153112727280/warrior-allura-here-to-beat-zarkon-into-the-ground)  
> \- The "royal" blue color tradition is something I came up with based on [the cape King Alfor wears in most of Allura's flashbacks.](http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/voltron/images/a/ae/100._King_Alfor_in_Allura%27s_flashback.png/revision/latest?cb=20160702021919)  
> \- As stated at the very beginning, this fic is a remix of both _The Crown_ and _The Bodyguard,_ and this chapter is where _The Bodyguard_ flavor truly shines :') The scenes with the most influence are [this one,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXdj_VnpeXU) [this one,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5x9Yi3FzP4) and of course [this one.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx8u3J7TlWg)  
>  \- Hunk did not even enter the judging to win the space Michelin stars, just one day an alien came with a gigantic trophy that had his name on it in 8 languages. Later he found out food critics were signing up for the Peace Guard to try and eat in the Castle mess hall.
> 
> Lastly: you may have noticed this fic used to be listed as a 3-chapter piece, and now it is 4. There IS an epilogue coming, and it won't take 3 months to write this time. ……Well maybe I shouldn't have have risked jinxing that, but stay tuned!!!!


	4. IV

_Prince Philip is the only man in the world who treats the Queen simply as another human being._  
_He's the only man who can. I believe she values that. And, of course, it's not unknown for the Queen to say,_  
_“Philip, do shut up!” Because she is Queen, that is not something she can easily say to anybody else._

—Lord Charteris of Amisfield, private secretary to Elizabeth II from 1972-1977

 

 

Five days after the coronation, Shiro shakes the Paladins and his other subordinates out of their bunks and drags them to the training deck. Lance, claiming he’s still hungover, shuffles around the jogging track moaning while Pidge and Keith try to wake up Hunk from where he’s fallen asleep on the weight bench. The rest of the Peace Guard recruits, thank god, are still too deferential to attempt such mutiny. As Shiro sends them to the showers with his best I’m-disappointed-in-your-lack-of-initiative tone, there’s a light tug on the hem of his shirt that accompanies a smooth, velvety voice.

“Excuse me, Paladin Shirogane, may I have your attention for a moment?”

Shiro looks down to find a familiar face. It’s been six months, but he would recognize the gills anywhere.

“Hey!” he says, smiling at the Quilaxian. “It’s been a while!”

“Indeed it has, sir. First, may I introduce myself? Our previous encounter left no room for pleasantries. I am Hrigin Hrithian, from the planet Quilax.” They duck into a short bow. “Second, I must apologize for the misunderstanding we had the last time we met. I didn’t mean to take you away from your other obligations on such short notice.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Shiro says, and makes a mental note to congratulate Pidge later on her handiwork. If all Quilaxians sound this good through translators alone, they’re going to make a pretty amazing splash in intergalactic government. “As it turns out, you were right; your message was definitely more important than a routine workout.”

They bow again. “A thousand thanks, sir! On that note, I do come bearing another summons from Her Majesty.”

“Of course,” Shiro says. “Where can I find her?”

The Quilaxian chuckles, a smooth, deep sound coming somewhere from the gills that fan around their face.

“She claims that you already know where.”

 

* * *

 

Allura was waiting for him. She has a handful of holoscreens up and running, but they’re all set to monitor mode, leisurely scrolling through the Castle’s systems. She looks tired, but she’s humming a half-formed song under her breath. There’s a blue shawl draped around her shoulders, pleated and pinned with a brooch so that the ends fall down her back. He can remember the hologram of King Alfor wearing something like it. Her hair is swept back in a loose knot, though a short few strands at the base of her neck have escaped.  
  
She does not look as commanding as she does in uniform, nor as decorated as she did in coronation regalia, but Shiro’s breath still catches in his throat. Allura has never looked more at home, nor more like a queen.  
  
“Shiro, thank you for coming so quickly,” she says, greeting him warmly as she looks up. She gestures to his usual chair. “I hope Lieutenant Hrithian didn’t pull you from anything important.”  
  
“No, I was just wrapping up a drill session.” He takes a seat. “Well, less of a drill session and more of an attempt at a hangover cure.”  
  
Allura sighs. “I did warn them that Altean liquor is designed for a species with a body density triple to that of humans, but I believe I was dismissed as a ‘damp blanket.’ At least Keith’s pinkness has worn off?”  
  
“It wore off pretty quickly after Coran gave him that raw Rerka egg cocktail,” Shiro confirms. “Unfortunately I think it had the side effect of scaring him away from eggs for the rest of his life, too.”  
  
“Oh dear. I suppose the smell isn't for everyone.” Allura folds her hands in her lap. “And you, Shiro—have you recovered from last week?”  
  
He’s been asked variations of that question by nearly everyone on the ship by now. But unlike the others, Allura doesn’t glance surreptitiously downward, scanning his torso for open wounds. Her eyes stay carefully trained on his face.  
  
“Nothing a good night’s sleep couldn’t fix,” he answers. “And for once in my life I had a full week of good nights.” He leans forward in his chair. “How about you?”  
  
“You know me,” she shrugs. She flexes the fingers of her left hand, bending one after the other like a pianist at the keys. The back of her hand bears no scar at all. “I always bounce back.”  
  
Shiro nods. They look at each other for a moment, like two chess players sizing each other up across the board.  
  
“I did have a reason for calling you here.” Allura wags a finger and all of the holoscreens close, vanishing. “In light of your service these past few months, I believe you're due for a promotion. There’s a position I’d like to offer you.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“I want you to be Captain of the Queen’s Guard.”  
  
Shiro snorts. “As honored as I am by the promotion, I'd reconsider making me your bodyguard again. I think everyone would agree that you were better at saving my life than I was at saving yours. Not to mention we—we didn’t work very well, when we had to share personal space. But I’d love to hear how you intend to sell this. What are the benefits?”  
  
“Well, to begin with, you wouldn’t have to creep along behind me where I can’t see.” Allura’s voice, hoarse from greeting thousands of guests over the last few days, makes her tone even drier than usual.  
  
“Yes, but the creeping is important, Your Majesty,” he counters, slowly smiling. “That’s what shadows are supposed to do.”  
  
She rolls her eyes. “You wouldn’t have to creep, and you could skip the more stale events if you wanted; the dinner parties and the dances, the very dry poetry convocations. You’d have full control over the Castle’s internal security and be consulted on Peace Guard movements if we need more coverage. You’d advise me on safety risks and coordinate with any staff you require to ensure this ship runs as smoothly as possible. To put it bluntly, you’d be an officer, not an accessory.  
  
“You asked me to sell it to you, but I have to be honest.” She smooths her skirt over her knees. “It won’t be an easy job. There are still hostile forces out there who want me dead. There will be complications, and sleepless nights, and a lot of hours spent reading through all of the hate mail I get over trivial press matters that never amounts to anything. You know as well that I’m not always—” she bites her lip, “—the easiest person to work with. But this is the highest position in my personal staff, and I don’t think I could ask anyone else.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because I trust you."

“Will you be mad if I refuse?” he asks.  
  
Allura shakes her head. “Never.”

Shiro considers it.  
  
It takes him only four steps to go around the desk and kneel before her.  
  
“The ceremony is very short. You’ll vow to take on the burdens of your office with a simple ‘I do.’” Allura clears her throat. “Do you, Takashi Shirogane, swear to devote yourself to the throne of Altea?”  
  
“I do.”  
  
“Do you swear to be the shield of the sovereign in the face of harm?”  
  
“I do.”  
  
“Then I, Allura Alforin A’Vassani, Queen of Altea, place my life in your hands, and _a’farrin hezheil garras_. Do you accept?”  
  
He smiles. “Your last part was lost in translation again.”  
  
Allura sighs. “I guess our old tech really doesn’t like figuring out the ancient formal tense.” She closes her eyes for a moment, her lips moving soundlessly as she tries to rewrite the words. “Then I, Allura Alforin A’Vassani, Queen of Altea, place my life in your hands, and give you—give you charge of my beating heart, come what may.” She swallows. “Do you accept?”  
  
Shiro dips his head. “I do.”

Her lips are soft as she kisses him on both cheeks again, a courtesy, a ritual, a tradition foreign and yet familiar. To turn his head she places her hand against his jaw, fingers light on his pulse. It lingers there for a moment as she pulls away, and then she smiles softly and moves to stand.

Before he can talk himself out of it, Shiro stops her hand. Raising it to his lips, his kisses her knuckle where the Star of the Amara once sat.

They are silent for a moment.

“You said once before that letting your guard down could compromise your job,” Allura reminds him. It is a warning, but a gentle one. It hides a question she does not ask.

“I did,” he affirms, “and it still could. But I’ve realized that not showing any weakness wouldn’t make me stronger, just as only following orders wouldn’t make me a better soldier.” He runs his thumb over the back of her palm once. “You understand that more than anyone, I think.”

She hums. “Yes. I think I do.”

With her other hand, Allura shifts her skirts so that she can kneel too. When she first kisses him it is light and quick, a careful trial to make sure he will not pull away. Shiro doesn’t pull away. He cups his hands around the back of her neck and moves in. He lets Allura kiss him slow and deep, like she has all the time in the world to spend here, like she wants to savor each second. He lets her wind her arms around his waist and hold him fast.

It is everything and nothing like he imagined—it is far better.

Already she’s found the curve of his hip again. He catches her hand and traces up from her fingers to her wrist to her elbow, the smooth silk sleeve of her gown rustling under his palm. It will happen like this: they will undress this time. He will peel off the petals of her skirt and run his hands over the bare skin of her calves, her thighs. He will unpin the shawl from her shoulders and carefully lay it aside. He will take her hand and ask her to show him what to do. And afterward, neither of them will feel like running.

“We should talk,” he murmurs, “about when we did this before.”

“We should,” she agrees. “But forgive me—I don’t want to talk right now. Can it wait until later?”

“How much later?”

“When my Apeiron Court duties are complete.” She draws a slow line over his cheekbone with her thumb. “When the universe can stand a little steadier on its own.”

“So you mean 'never.'”

She laughs, a real laugh, one that shakes her shoulders and creases the dimples in her cheeks. This close, Shiro can spy a pale brown line, hair-thin, that curves under her jaw. The cut from the Madeera ended up leaving a scar after all. He’s going to kiss her there, he decides. But she catches his mouth with hers before he can make his move.

“We’ll talk later,” she promises, whispering in between kisses. “You have my word.”

“And how good is your word, Your Majesty?”

“I am your Queen,” Allura says. She pulls back just far enough to brush the tip of his nose with her own. “My word is as good as law.”

He only has to trust her. That, Shiro knows, is something he can do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, at the end… I'll do the footnotes first before I say my final piece
> 
> \- Like I mentioned in the notes for Part III, I made [a Pinterest board](http://pin.it/Sn7JEl-) of my mental Allura Fashion Lookbook for this fic. But for the epilogue, rather than the bigger and heavier gown styles she might have worn for ceremony, I wanted to picture Allura wearing something she’d find comfortable. I went in the direction of looser pieces with layers, much like her canon dress, imagining that this is how she could “relax” out of uniform while still looking properly royal. Her final appearance in the epilogue ended up being directly based on [this Anju Modi ensemble.](http://pin.it/SYVCF6s)  
> \- As you probably could tell, I am a huge history, anthropology, and linguistics nerd, and all three featured heavily in my writing process! All of the alien names and planets in this fic were made up by me, and all of the Altean full names were made based on a whole system I made up. It is just a trademark of who I am to have made a 4-page doc on how I invented an entire naming structure that I use TWICE in 30k words, but I figured it might be fun for people to look through! So if you ever want to write your name in MJ Altean Style or just make up an Altean name of your own, [here’s your guide.](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NcZQvqOAixHuXjZ6SZnEnO8N53Iy5jnRkrVAVG6Xk8k/edit?usp=sharing)
> 
> I'd like to extend a HUGE thank you to my readers: every kudos and comment has blown me away, simply because I didn't think anyone other than the intended giftee would be interested in sloughing through a small novella based on a mashup of a Netflix series about British royals in the 1950s and a Whitney Houston film!?!? Y'all got some niche tastes and I love you for it. And thank you so much for sticking with me despite the long gap between chapters!!! I hope I closed the tale well :)
> 
> Most importantly, to dear, dear Mer/aquamirage/meredyd/oh man I don't remember which username you have on which platform anymore, I just know that you manage to follow me everywhere so that I don't lose track: you are one of my oldest friends on this internet, a first gen fandom collectible. I'm so glad that you are still here, and have been here with me writing good words, reading good things, and inspiring your space niece all the while. Now that I've given you approximately one billion words of our fave space het, I have very little left to say except that I love you <3333 Lord beer us strength for Philip's nonsense in The Crown s2.
> 
> I don't really do much there aside from fill my queue and make the occasional text post, but if you should want to contact me on tumblr I am known as @m-azing. Abandon all hope, ye who enter there…
> 
> Once again: thank you, thank you, thank you. Goodnight <3


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